Whither Cool Weather?

 Will it EVER cool down enough for me to wear jeans again????

At this point, I have my doubts.  I know I've experienced warm Octobers before. I can even remember trick-or-treating with the kids back when we first moved to AZ and feeling like I was going to pass out from heat stroke. (Granted, my heat tolerance was still much lower then.) But with triple digit temps still going on around here, you won't find me wearing jeans any time soon. (You'll never find me wearing a sweater. Even when it gets cold. The sweater thing is baffling. So itchy.)

Part of the problem with the heat is that is keeps confusing the heck out of me. Is it almost the end of October or not? Surely we still have weeks before Halloween? I finally forced myself to buy candy and pumpkins this week, since I know from experience that in our area at least those items disappear during the week before Halloween. Once I waited until the day before Halloween to buy pumpkins and that meant a drive to multiple stores and finally caving and getting ridiculously overpriced ones from a pumpkin patch. Never again.

(As an aside, what is up with the albino pumpkins this year???? There's always a few-- gourds masquerading as pumpkins for those who prefer "autumn decor" to Halloween carving. But our local Walmart had two bins full of them, same price as regular pumpkins. I was almost tempted to get one. Just to see how weird a jack-o-lantern it made. But I passed because then I would be obligated to carve it.)

(Oh, and as a second aside, speaking of things that disappear of the store shelves. What the heck happened to all the trifold boards in the area? B needed one for a school project and we tried two Walmarts and Staples to find that they were stripped bare. It's not science fair time, nor wax museum time. What the heck? Staples had exactly one left-- a red one-- and it cost me $15. Fifteen. Next time I'm cutting up a $1 moving box and making a display board out of it. The funny part is that B's teacher had asked the kids to "dazzle" her with their displays. B wrote on the back of hers: "This board cost $15. BE DAZZLED." Her teacher laughed and gave her full credit.)

My super exciting news for the month? I finally-- FINALLY-- finished Sheralie #6. (Still does not have a title. Not even a poor attempt at one.) That is the book I wrote for Nanowrimo last year, and it came out in a ferocious flood, probably the fastest writing I have ever done. But 50k words is only about half a book for me, so I needed to write the other half. And I started out OK, good progress, good ideas, then...

2023 HAPPENED.

This year was a like a deluge poured on top of the fire of my creativity. Seriously, my writing died for several months. And when I did come back to it, I cut about 20k (yes, that's twenty thousand) words from Sheralie #6 and tried again. I just couldn't figure out what the climax needed to be or even how to get there. Several times during the last couple months I wanted to pound my fists against all wall in plot frustration. (Except my poor fists have been through enough trauma, thank you very much.) Anyway, I finally managed to figure it out. The secret? I started praying before each writing session. Truly. It made an amazing difference, and even though it was sometimes a torturously slow process, plot points fell into place just when I needed them. The draft is still very rough, but good enough for me to go forward and start Sheralie #7 for Nanowrimo on November 1st. In a week and a half.

How can it be almost November already? It's still 100 degrees outside!!!!

Come on, Arizona. Give me fall. Pretty please?