1. Hey, it’s October…what’s one fun thing on your October calendar? 

Lots on our calendar this month but the one I thought of is the homebrew fest in Jacksonville. We’ll be serving, along with another couple from the club. Should be fun; we’ll get there Friday evening, probably hang out with them at breweries after dropping off our kegs at the place, then we serve Saturday and come home Sunday morning.

2. Thursday is National Poetry Day (first Thursday in October)…do you like to read poetry? If so, what’s a favorite poem, or whose poetry do you especially enjoy? 

You know, I go in phases with poetry. I never found myself very good at it when I was getting my degrees in writing, but I do enjoy some. I sometimes see people I know from grad school getting their poems published so I will read them. I am particularly fond of Billy Collins, because his are very practical. I’ll share this one called “Introduction to poetry”, which reminds me of being in poetry workshops where I just felt out of my depth:

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

3. Tell us about something you’ve seen recently that could be described as ‘poetry in motion’. 

Hmm, the only thing I could think about is this book I read recently and how this author could describe something so beautifully and masterfully.

4. What’s one song on your autumn playlist? Do you have an autumn playlist? If not, pretend you do. If yes, then feel free to share more than one. 

I don’t have a playlist but I do think the season lends itself to a certain sound. See below. I think these types of songs really sound like fall to me. And as a random aside, I listen to the Sinatra channel on XM and whenever I tune to it in the car, the kids ask “Christmas?” and I just say no, the old standards.

5. Share a quote that inspires you this time of year especially. 

I had to go searching but this one struck me:

6. Insert your own random thought here.  

It’s my at-home day but I have to get an oil change so after I take my daughter to school, I plan to drop my car off then walk to the shopping center across the street and get a pedicure. It’s been a while and I really need one. I can hopefully catch up on work too. I sat in my office in between classes yesterday but just could not get motivated. I go through these phases of working really hard on everything and basking in the feeling of accomplishment and then find myself bereft of energy! Funny enough, Ash woke around 5 and then so did I and couldn’t get back to sleep. So I just got up and for the first 40 minutes of the day, I just sipped my coffee and watched a review of the movie we saw last night, The Substance, which was crazy. It was very good but gory, which I expected. We watched this same director’s movie from 2017, Revenge, and it was insane too.

In good random news, my parents signed paperwork to close on my grandfather’s house – finally. He died in July ’22 and they finally got it all cleaned up and sold. It took my mom a while to really wrap her mind around it and then it was a process of figuring out what to do with stuff. Then it had to be cleaned and updated a bit then put on the market. In case you’re interested, this was it. I don’t have a lot of attachment to it, as he and my grandma lived somewhere else about 10 minutes from there until I was maybe 28 or so. My childhood memories of them are confined to their other house, the one my mom lived in during her senior year of high school. But the one they sold does have a special place as we took the kids to see my grandparents over the years. Not as often as I’d like, since it’s about 7 hours from here, but I remember those moments fondly.

Something went weird with the formatting on this post; I apologize. I’m also too lazy to fix it.