Couldn't Stand It No More

I've been wanting to Christmas-up my blog for over a week!!  Ami made me such a beautiful header that I could not wait another second.  (That's Little Me and Little Larry with the snowman we built.  Awwwww.)

Sooooooo....

Let us commence to Christmasing!!

Fall In The 'Hood

We have had an absolutely gorgeous weekend and I got out yesterday and took some pictures of some of the fall that's remaining in my neighborhood. The leaves are turning brown SO FAST that I thought I'd better snap a few pictures before all of that beautiful color is gone.

The red orange and evergreen against that blue sky was just so pretty to me.  I love how this one turned out! 

This little feller just sat there and posed for me.  The squirrels around here are so used to us feeding them that they are not scared of nothin'! Probably not very smart for them. I love how he's wearing his Southern boy camo britches for this picture!  You almost can't see him.          

This is that huge oak tree in our backyard.  I was just telling Larry yesterday morning how bright yellow the leaves were. When I took this picture just a few hours later, some of them were already turning brown. Winter is coming fast!   

This pretty thing is next door.  I'm not sure what kind of tree it is but I love it, too.  It'll be completely bare in about two weeks.  Of all of our trees around here, it's always the prettiest and always the first to go.  

Dome Day!

I'm reading Stephen King's new book, Under The Dome. I got it yesterday at Books-A-Million. It is HUGE!! I almost can't hold it. It's over 1,000 pages and so far, so very good. I love SK's crazy ass anyway, though.

This is what USA Today had to say about it:

When the dome comes down on Chester's Mill, Maine, in Stephen King's propulsively intriguing Under the Dome, we are slammed up against the wall of one of his mightiest epics.

On a sunny autumn day, a woman reaching for a garden squash loses her hand and a grazing deer his head when an invisible and impenetrable bubble clamps down around this rural town. Helicopters, planes, trucks and cars slam into the dome with deadly results.

Life under this impenetrable big top isn't just the weirdest show on Earth, it's the only show as the media, the military and the loved ones of the dome's trapped population converge on its impermeable borders.

"It's some kind of force field, like in a Star Trick movie," surmises one of the local yokels. But who or what is to blame? The military-industrial complex? Mad scientists? Extraterrestrials? Or according to Big Jim Rennie, one of the book's most evil and compelling characters, "the work of God's righteous hand."

Selectman Rennie, a used-car salesman with delusions of grandeur, sees the dome as his chance to become king of this newly created principality – maybe even make the cover ofTime.

Under his lumbering, maniacal reign, "legal is whatever we decide" becomes the mantra of Chester's Mill's police force.

But Rennie has a formidable opponent in Col. Dale "Barbie" Barbara, a decorated Iraq war veteran among the thousand or so stuck under the dome. Barbie is tapped by the U.S. president – Rennie refers to him as "the one who has three names including the terrorist one in the middle" – to govern the dome's populace. But Rennie is having none of it.

Readers will find the ensuing battle between good and evil staggeringly addictive. It's bloody and heated, and just when you think things can't get any worse for Barbie and his band of freedom fighters, they do.

Readers can wallow in this glorious novel's metaphoric and oh-so au courant messages about U.S. domination, freedom of the press, torture and environmental abuse, but they also can come to this novel just for the story.

King dishes up a fantastic you'll-never-see-it-coming culprit behind this domesday scenario. But it's the story of the people – the human zoo – trapped inside the dome that's most gripping.

In these days of text messages and Twitter novels, King grips us in a chokehold of un-put-downable fascination for more than 1,000 pages.

It's Veterans Day!

I'm spending the day lovin' on my most favorite veteran in the whole world. Take some time today to thank one for his (or her) sacrifice and service!

Ida Had To Rake Leaves Tomorrow...

...but thanks to this girl here, I don't have to.

Hurricane Ida has dumped so much rain on us today!

I had planned to clean my yards tomorrow afternoon but that's completely out now. You ever tried to use a leaf blower on wet leaves? Um. Yeah. They don't move.

I'm just devastated about it. :)

The Sky Is Falling!

Well, actually, it's acorns. A hundred thousand acorns waking me up at 3:00 in the morning when they fall from my backyard oak tree, ping off the roof and then roll down and hit the patio. Pow! It sounds like a driving range around here.

And we don't even want to talk about what they do to bare feet. Ow!

They were like this last year, too. I did a little research and found out that every seven years or so, acorns reproduce like little pink bunnies and absolutely cover the earth with their round cuteness.

I also read that tons of acorns means a very cold winter ahead. Don't like that. If that's the case, Warner Robins better buy up all the bread and milk NOW.

I Give Up. Merry Christmas!

Few things brought me as much joy when I was a little girl as the Sears Christmas Wish Book. I got one in the mail today and all those old memories just came flooding back! Memories of me and my brother laying on our bellies on the living room floor, circling toys and dog-earing the pages of that wonderful, magical book.

I've been trying really hard to savor fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving but Sears sho' makin' it hard for me to not think about Christmas! I found some pictures online of some things that were fantasies in the Wish Books of my childhood and then became realities on Christmas morning. Santa Claus at my house ROCKED!

The Sunshine Family!! Oh, how I loved these dolls!! Steve, Steffie and Baby Sweets. 1973-74? Cute little hippie family who were green and ate granola and probably smoked pot when I wasn't looking. No wonder I loved 'em so much. They also gardened and made crafts and recycled. Oh yeah, and I remember their eyes used to pop out a lot.

My Easy Bake Oven! I remember me and Ricky baking Jesus a birthday cake that Christmas morning. Awwww.

And I was ALL about the babies! I got so many dolls, a new one every Christmas. I had all of the Tender Love Dolls as well as Baby Alive, Baby That-A-Way, Rub-A-Dub Dolly and Baby Drowsy. I still have most of my babies but they're still living with their grandparents.

I'm such a bad mama.