It's soup weather. Very cool and damp. I wore six layers while out walking the dog this weekend. Walking the dog is good though, because it forces me off my lazy rear and gets me outside when nothing else will. I'm walking past trees and breathing in fresh air, instead of hugging the heat vent. Maybe I'll become more outdoorsy. Maybe having this dog will transform me into a true Nature Woman. Instead of a pasty, sedentary, type hurrying from the car to the cocoon of her house, where soup and hot beverages await.

I was all set to brave the chilly air yesterday and hang some Halloween decorations from the porch. I got out the plastic, bendable skeleton, and a weird pumpkin-head man the kids got from their grandparents. But I tossed them on the couch--until I could get to them later--and that's as far as they got. They lay crumpled together on the couch all afternoon, the glaring, green-eyed skeleton and the woeful pumpkin-head creature, waiting for me disentangle them and set them to fluttering in the wind. But that spare moment I was looking for never came, and by the end of the evening they had been dumped back into the garage with the boxes of Christmas decorations.