Some of you out there in Blogville who are wishing that Fall gets here quickly will SO love this prediction. I really think it is only days away. (I won’t say how many days because I don’t want to look foolish). But when you hear my reasons of why I KNOW it must be close you will totally understand why I do not need a weather person to tell me when it will arrive. First of all, my first sign that it will be here soon is my desire to grow my hair (no, not the hair on my legs, I’m actually so old that there’s not much of that left). For some reason, by this time each year, my love of short hair is disappearing. All I can think about is “wonder how long it will take my hair this time to get to one length?” Each year, it’s the same thing. Blaming it on the nights that is still too hot to go walking or exercising, I sit and look through old photos, which includes pictures of previous Falls and Winters when my hair seemed to be headed toward growing out from it’s summer short cut. So when that desire to let it grow comes over me, I can rest assured Fall is almost here.

Another sign that Fall is close, is my desire to rearrange furniture. Sitting there in the evenings I begin to look around the room, wondering where the Christmas TREES will go this year. Notice I said trees, not tree. If there were only one, I wouldn’t have too much trouble, but because I like to have one in each room to enjoy the lights of the season, I realize that we will be moving furniture around. When we sit at night and Randy sees my eyes looking around the room, he says, “oh no, you are thinking again. What and where are we moving?” He also has learned that when I start that, it will be impossible for me to go to sleep until I have moved what I have imagined the whole evening. So he gets up, goes to the cabinet and gets out the sliders. We are not talking about hamburger sliders, we are talking about the most wonderful invention, little cushioned plastic backed pieces which allow me to slide any furniture anyplace. IF you are strong enough to lift a piece of furniture so that the slider is scooted under it, you can move it. We have had these sliders since around 1996. When we first married, Randy traveled quite a bit. Most of the time I went with him, but if he was going to boring cities, I stayed home and rearranged furniture how I wanted it to be without him looking over my shoulder and throwing his two cents in of where he thought the couch should go. One of these evenings when he was out of town, he called me from the hotel. He said that he had the TV on and had seen something that he just knew I would love. As newlyweds, my mind began to wonder. TV…advertisements, close to Christmas; had he ordered me a new car? had he been watching the shopping network and had seen a beautiful diamond bracelet that would look perfect on my skinny little arm? (ok, maybe it wasn’t skinny, but it was definitely much smaller that it is now and there were not wings hanging from the underside)My imagine ran wild. He wouldn’t tell me what the surprise was. He sounded so excited that he had seen this and knew immediately that he wanted to buy them for me. So I would just have to wait. Well, in a few days, the wait was over. I came home to find a package on the front porch. Excitedly, I threw down my purse and began to tear the package open. There looking back at me were four sliders. Does he know how to win my heart or what?
Mr. Romantic! So to show him my appreciation, I moved every piece of furniture in the house before he got home. When he arrived back in Dallas and walked through the front door, his reply was, “I’m so glad I didn’t come home drunk, or I would have broke my leg falling over the newly placed furniture.” Call me crazy, but if I had a husband who drank too much, this system is certainly a lot cheaper than therapy. Just keep moving the furniture around. Keep em guessing. That’s my motto. OK, back to predicting Fall.

Last, but not least is my drink. All summer long, I was addicted to Ombre’s at Starbucks. Well, last Sunday, on the way home from church, I ordered my first Pumpkin Latte. There, that is the one true tale tale sign. When I no longer order cold drinks, but switch to Lattes, well, you might as well get that sweater out and start wearing your gold jewelry. Why is it silver jewelry just looks better in summer and gold looks like it belongs in Winter? You can trust me on this, it happens every year. So when you see me walking down the street (well, actually that would be a miracle in itself, as I don’t walk anywhere) with a Latte, wearing gold jewelry with long hair, you can turn the fireplace on, Fall is here. No need to watch the 6:00 weather!