The day is beautiful with a warm sun and an azure sky, but autumn is losing its hold. The nights are chilly, even cold. I put an afghan on my bed. It’s enough for now, but barely. Gracie cocooned herself this morning; she pushed the spread and afghan to the bottom of the bed and surrounded herself in covers. She is my harbinger of cold weather and the coming of winter.

I don’t have a single thing to do today. I think I’ll go out for a bit and meander with the dog. She likes a ride as much as I do.

When I was a little kid, we colored Easter eggs and made Christmas ornaments every year. My mother used to put newspaper on the table and we’d sit there and be creative. For Christmas, my mother used to save all sorts of scraps of cloth and ribbon and a box of assorted buttons she’d put out for us to use. Elmer’s glue was essential and messy, and our fingers used to stick in the scissors’ finger holes. Our finished ornaments were never pieces of art, but it didn’t mattered. My mother always hung them on the tree anyway. Coloring Easter eggs wasn’t all that messy. My mother would put out small bowls on the table with different colored dyes. We’d use spoons to dip and then dip the eggs again. There wasn’t much more to it than that, but those eggs looked beautiful in a basket of green grass.

Last year my friends and I started doing crafts before some of the holidays. We decorated skulls for Día de los Muertos, carved pumpkins for Halloween, made floats for Mardi Gras, folded origami for Chinese New Year, colored eggs for Easter and iced individual gingerbread houses for Christmas. It was so much fun we’re going to add holidays and different crafts this year. For Halloween we’ll be making scary clothespin figures like Frankenstein, a witch and a bat. I’m already looking forward to it. I even ordered two bottles of glue. I know how messy we get.