It's officially fall here. Mostly I know this because we had a light frost the other night and I am thinking about how I can gather my corn stalks and make corn shocks out of them that to me are so symbolic of the fall and the harvest. I have already found my fall decorations, put up a few Halloween things and I'm probably going to go find someone who will give me a few bales of hay to prop up a scarecrow in a few weeks.

I'm in full harvest mood, too. I picked all my wax beans and I've got so many I'm going to have to parboil some of them and drop them in ziplocs, so I can keep them for winter. I waited too long to put my tomatoes in and only have a few that are actually red and ripe and with the frost already starting up, I got my mother to send me her green tomato relish recipe. I'm figuring it looks like it makes two gallons of the stuff, so I'll be able to convert that to Christmas gifts.

My mother's green tomato relish is to die for, so you are someone very very super incredibly special to get that as a gift from me.

This is the first weekend we didn't go anywhere special in months. We didn't drive 3 hours to see Mike's grandparents. We didn't go to his company picnic. We didn't do anything except go have cheap breakfast at a nearby casino. While we were there, Mike and I took turns playing slots and I won $5 on deuces wild poker. Then I took that $5 and let Russell pick 10 Keno numbers and we won $11 (clearing $6) doing that. Then we were driving around downtown and found places we'd never seen before and somewhere in there we came across a bowling alley. So we went bowling.

Bowling seems like one of the last vestigial remnants of a happier time in American history. There's something quasi-creepy and simultaneously reassuring about a bowling alley. Walking by a store that has fancy bowling bags and shoes, past video games that are at least 10 year passe, and that stale scent of cigarettes, beer, and disappointment reek of historical significance. Mostly, though, it seems like a trip down Memory Lane as I remember the high school boyfriends I've had and the groping we did before and after the bowling alley date, and the times we told our parents we'd gone bowling when in actuality we were exploring how much sex we could have without changing my virginity.

I have a magnet on my fridge that says,"You can't have my virginity, but you can play with the box it came in."

Today, I got a respectable 122, however, it should be noted that I got two strikes by bouncing the ball off the bumpers. The last frame, I managed to find a ball that weighed 13lbs instead of 15 and I got a spare and a strike, the old-fashioned way. My husband, who did not break 100, was eternally thankful it took me 9 frames to find that ball. The kids had a total blast. Genny, adorned in pigtails and a lavendar sweatsuit, was quite the "roll-the-ball-from-between-your-knees" bowler, though Mom and Dad often gave the ball an extra push. Russell kind of heaved the ball. I kept expecting it was going to hop lanes, but it spun its way thru many pin setups, so he did pretty well, too.

Other than that, I'm experimenting with having a cooking weekend. I've got the meals planned out for the week and I've already cooked one big one. I've got the setups planned for two more tonight, but I am thinking we'll have leftovers on Friday because there's a lot of food. I already bought and shopped for the food for the week. It's nice because nothing will be wasted and it'll all be something we can walk in the door and toss in the nuker. Realistically, it's hyper-organized I realize, but it feels really good. And last night, I made a low-sugar blueberry crisp.

Okay, you can run screaming from the room now.