All's quiet on the western front.

And it's cold. Very very cold.

Seems we went right past fall into winter. Snow and everything. Even the trees were caught off guard as many of them still have all their summer green leaves.

Fall is my favorite time of year. There's something about the colors, the sky, the smell that just....I don't know. Makes me feel all mooshy inside. (All together now....ahhhhh.)

Some of my most vivid memories are of the fall or of Halloween. I distinctly remember those network Halloween specials that they used to run. "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" was an annual affair. I remember watching some corny special while my mom made homemade donuts (the long, labor intensive kind, not the refrigerator biscuit kind that I make do with.) I remember pumpkin carving and roasting pumpkin seeds. I remember trick-or-treating in the rain wearing a long black wig and my gypsy costume from the ward road show and thinking I looked kinda hot. I remember that Halloween candy used to be smarties and marshmallow peanuts, and if you got chocolate you SCORED!

When I was out of High School, I still got to play dress up for two Octobers in one of those spook alleys. The first year I was a gypsy (maybe that's a karmic sign of my wanderlust) and had to wear this necklace made of REAL chicken feet. The spook alley was designed by Pat Davis who was a big wig in theater around here, so instead of the standard shock and scare production, there were scripted parts and mini plays. And my part went something like this:

"Have you ever seen a geek?" (Why yes, they have! Looking back, I was probably a prime example right at the moment...) "A geek is a fellow who eats LIVE CHICKENS...picks 'em clean. Started out addicted to his mom's southern fried...then moved to rare chickens...then to raw. Now he eats them chickens live, feathers and all!" (And then there was some screaming and rattling of my "gypsy caravan" while I uttered some warnings about how they'd better hurry along before the geek got tired of eating chicken. Lots of people came up to feel my chicken feet necklace thinking that it was fake only to freak out when they felt the skin slide over the bones. (And even though I was a geeky gypsy, I was still hot. I've got a picture here somewhere to prove it.) Pat apparently really liked that little bit of script, because I saw it years later in another one of her spooky productions. It even landed me an audition for a commercial, which I didn't get. C'est la vie.

The second year I did the spook alley, I got decapitated. I was up on a wooden cart dressed in medieval dress while some guy yelled about how I was guilty and the punishment was death. Then I knelt behind the guillotine and stuck a horrible fake head through it (that didn't even have a wig that matched my hair) and dropped it when the blade when down. Then I got to peek through the hole and squirt the crowd. One fellow just about jumped up on the wagon after I gave his leather jacket a good soak. (bwaa haa haaa.)

Every year, just smelling the autumn air at night will bring back these memories.

Except this year. Because it's COLD. And it SNOWED. NO pretty leaves, NO beautiful sunsets and NO leafy, smoky smell.

The weather man has promised that things will warm up soon. I really, really hope so, because I've discovered that I need Autumn.

I need the moody orange skies. Need the walks in the warm, fragrant evenings. Need to look up to see the mountains swathed in bright oranges, reds, and yellows.

Need to be transported back to a warmer, safer time where the world is colorful and smells like donuts.

The homemade kind. Not the ones in the refrigerator cans.