What a week. Whew! Surgery is over, I had that yesterday, and I am happily recovering at home. Currently, Pip the Kitten is acting as my foot warmer, and I’m comfortable. More comfortable, if a bit weaker, than I was Tuesday. I was expecting that but it’s still surprising. At any rate, I’m super grateful to have the surgery out of the way, and I thank you all for the positive thoughts and prayers.

I’ve not gotten a lot done lately in the way of writing, and looking back at how I’ve been feeling—especially comparing then to now—I can see why. It’s hard to put into words, even for someone who makes a living putting things into words. The best way I can come up with to describe it is that pre-surgery, I felt like all my energy was held in a bathtub and someone had pulled the plug, and I was just draining away. Now, I feel like that drain has stopped. I’m building energy back up—yes, even this soon after surgery. That’s a bit scary, really.

Moral of this story is listen to your gut. If it tells you something’s wrong, don’t discount it.

In other news… fall is still approaching in an odd and skittery fashion. A third of our trees are bald, a third are fully green, and the remaining third are somewhere between colored for fall and looking like refugees from a paint factory. We go from summer temps to winter temps with barely a pause in between and then back again. It’s the weirdest autumn I can remember experiencing, but that’s okay. It isn’t bad—just weird.

Halloween is just around the corner. We don’t really ever have trick or treaters. We’ve never lived anywhere that we did. I don’t expect any this year except the neighbor kid, who isn’t the neighbor anymore because they moved. Watch us get a hundred. I’ll be passing out pencils and office supplies if that’s the case. Hey, kiddies! How about some sticky notes? HA!

Now that I’m hopefully on the road to recovery, it’s time to shift my attention back to the creative. With luck, by early next week, I’ll be writing again. Doing these semi-regular blog posts has helped me feel like I’m not a hundred percent disconnected from creating, but I’m itching to get back into the swing of things.

So what are you reading these days? Are you finding any awesome, cheesy horror flicks? I’ve heard terrific things about the latest iteration of “Hill House.” It’s definitely on our list of things to watch soon.

Speaking of things to watch—while browsing the night before surgery, I came across a video on YouTube. It’s ten hours of music set to the meows of two kittens. I love YouTube. You can have serious things like TED talks or ten hours of cats in space. I’ll leave the link here in case you want to check it out.

Happy Reading!

T. L.