Fall isn't just for raking leaves

Hi neighbors. I hope you are out taking advantage of the autumn weather. The leaves haven't started to fall much yet and the temperatures are nice.

There is always lots of work to do. Get the patio furniture into storage, roll up the garden hoses, touch up the exterior of the house with a dab of paint here and there. Don't forget to cover those attic fans, throw in some more insulation, put some grout around the windows and some weather stripping around the doors.

But do all that as quickly as possible so you don't spend ALL of this great weather working. There are some more fun things to do before leaf raking days arrive.

While you're on the roof checking out those attic fans and cleaning out the rain gutters, go ahead and hang up some orange and green Halloween lights. If you want to save a trip later, twist in your Christmas light wires while you're at it. You only have to turn on one string at a time and you only have to get on the roof once. You can take both down after Christmas.

With all that climbing on the roof though, make certain you have a sturdy ladder -- and good health insurance.

Have you made your first big pot of chili yet this fall? I think I'll wait till the season is a bit further along for chili. Now is a better time for home-made potato soup.

Don't forget to schedule some time in a week or two to drive around looking at the fall foliage.

While you're out looking around, don't forget to stop in at the Bushwhacker Museum before it closes for the season at the end of October.

Now that I have a car I can trust to venture outside of the city limits, I'll probably go to Iowa sometime this month and watch my granddaughter dance. At six years old she can do the basic Fox Trot, Tango and Waltz. I am so proud of her! I can't dance a step, but I suppose having a mother who teaches dance is a good reason she's so accomplished.

It could be I won't be traveling alone this time. If I can't find a dog-setter, my little Min-Pin will be going along. I don't know how that will work out. She's made the trip before, but my son was there to help comfort her (and determine when it was time to pull over.)Time will tell.

Halloween is always a cool holiday. Kids (of all ages) show up on my porch dressed like monsters, cowboys, super heros, princesses and various animals. I think it's great that costumes are so easy to come by these days. All you have to do is go buy a ready made one.

When I was a kid (yeah, yeah, walked six miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways)we had to make our own costumes.

A lot of aluminum foil-covered cardboard box robots used to show up. Cowboys and cowgirls were big. There were a lot of hobos. Hobo outfits were easy to make. You just had to cut holes in old clothes and smear some mud on your face; what kid wouldn't love that? If you could get some free sample Avon lipstick in those little plastic things, you could rub that all around you mouth and down your chin and go as a vampire. No one wore the fake teeth back then.

The really lucky vampires had moms who used the white mud-like facial creme. Rub some of that on your face and it was almost as good as white-face and showed off the lipstick 'blood' really well.

Ghosts were always popular. Most moms had at least one white sheet that was due to be thrown away anyhow. (Although some discovered these suddenly torn sheets only a day or two before Halloween.) If your Dad had a flashlight, and was naive enough to let you borrow it, you could hide it in your hand and shine it on your ghostly or vampire face when you ran the doorbell. Treaters always seemed amazingly frightened of that little trick.

The last few years I went Trick-or-Treating someone invented those little flashlights that used a single AA battery. They only lasted about 15 minutes before the off/on button broke or the bulb burnt out. Besides the beam was so dim it wasn't very effective to shine on your face to scare people and forget using it to actually see where you were going.

Until the next time friends remember, enjoy each of these beautiful fall days, winter is just around the corner.