Good grief….. It seems like it was just Halloween! While driving  to the grocery store today, I saw my first shopping center that was all decked out for Christmas! Can you believe that it isn’t even Thanksgiving, and already the shops are putting out wreaths? I guess that when the temperatures are as beautiful as we are experiencing here in San Antonio, the shop keepers need to do something to remind people to spend their money.

But, as usual, I digress……

I think that my psyche is conditioned to think of Thanksgiving as being three and a half weeks into November. With the first of November falling on a Thursday this year, my body’s routine has been messed up! Can you believe that we only have two weeks until Thanksgiving? I don’t think that I am the only one who hasn’t noticed that in exactly two weeks, some of us will be spending our entire day cooking, baking, peeling, mashing, carving, serving, and ultimately cleaning so that the other members of our family can enjoy a day of feasting and leisure.

Since Thanksgiving is falling so early in the month this year, this morning I noticed that the turkey isle in my grocery store wasn’t in total disarray…. There are still turkeys of every size available. Usually, two weeks before the big day, the turkeys have been picked over so much that you would have to either settle on a turkey so small that you would have to read its label to make sure it wasn’t a chicken, or a turkey so big that it wouldn’t fit in my normal-sized oven. Not so this year!

Anyway, to some of you out there who were as oblivious as I was…. Don’t be fooled by the decorative wreaths that you spot all over your towns/cities. Thanksgiving truly is around the corner…

I have just added a new page to my site. It is called the "Cozy Mysteries by Themes." If you click on the links on the page, it will take you to the exact blog that I wrote about the different featured subjects.

So far I have an animal category which includes the cozy mystery lists that feature dogs, cats, birds, birdwatchers, pet stores, pet sitting, and veterinarians.

The next category is the cozy mystery holidays. This is followed by the hobbies, which includes the cozy mystery books that feature beading, needlework, knitting, Sudoku, and books with the antique theme.

In the profession category, I only have ministers (who happen to be women) and veterinarians (the same as the animal theme books.) but, with a little time, I plan to have a whole lot of different professions that our favorite sleuths belong to.

This is just the very beginning, but I am excited about the new page because I think that it will make it easier for people who come to the site to be able to quickly access which cozy mystery authors feature different animals, professions, hobbies, and interests. I hope that having all of these lists on one central page will make it easier for the site’s readers…

It looks like our fall has finally arrived! Right now I am rejoicing about the change in weather… There are some negatives that go along with a cooler and wetter climate, but those are pretty minor for me (right now.) I just like to be reminded that there are four seasons to our year, and what better way than cold, wet rain.

(Unfortunately, our dog has a lot of allergies… which means that I have my work cut out for me at this time of the year. One year, when I wasn’t particularly diligent, she developed an infection in one of her paws that required several trips to the emergency, after-hour veterinary clinic, not to mention several trips to our vet during office hours.)

Anyway…. Is there any better way to pass a dreary October day than reading a wonderful cozy mystery? I am guessing that cozy-mystery-book-reading is pretty much at the top of most of our lists for days like this one. Unfortunately, I am sitting here blogging while waiting for a visit from the plumber. Yes, indeed! Not a great way to spend what I consider our first official day of fall. However, since my husband nor I know how to fix our plumbing problem, here I sit… waiting.

I guess that technically, I could be spending my waiting time reading my current cozy mystery… Great thought! I think I’ll do just that. And probably, as soon as I get to a cliff-hanging moment in the book… the doorbell will ring. Oh well, maybe that’s what I should have done to begin with… Who knows, if I had been enjoying my current M. C. Beaton novel, the plumber could have already arrived!

Now that I have my holiday books pretty much in order, I am going to tell you about something I have been doing for the last few years…

Since I have my own computer desk space… which no one else has to share with me… I decorate my computer area for the different holidays. It isn’t anything elaborate like putting up a Christmas tree, coloring Easter eggs, or placing dry ice in a cauldron… It’s something a lot easier than all of that.

Now that both of our children are adults, I don’t get out all of our different holiday decorations anymore. I would, if I thought that they might enjoy them… let alone notice them! Actually, when my daughter is home, she notices (and seems to enjoy) the things I put out around the house. But now that she is at college pretty much all of the time, I decorate a lot less. (As for my son, I don’t think that he notices what or when I put things out around the house!) When they are both home I do actually “holidize” our house, but, the rest of the time, I simply decorate my computer desk and put up a few magnets on the refrigerator. (I have cross stitched many seasonal magnets using Mill Hill beads…)

Anyway… my computer desk has the above-the-desk-top tier of compartmentalized shelves. The shelf areas are where I put my reusable 3-D holiday stickers. They aren’t like the flimsy stickers that are made to go on a piece of paper, they are made out of some type of poster board which is thick and more stable, with some lamination-type of substance and they have small sticky pads on the back. I use several packages of the stickers so that my desk area is truly a holiday area for me…

Right now I have my Jolee’s Boutique Halloween  stickers up. I will leave them up until the first of November… at which time I will put up my Thanksgiving stickers… (not this particular Jolee’s Boutique set, but I couldn’t highlight the sets that I have…) At the beginning of December I get out all of my Christmas stickers, which are from a lot of different sources. I especially like my Holly Wreath, Poinsettias, and Christmas Lights.  

Maybe all of these 3-D stickers on my computer desk are simply a return to the bulletin boards that I used to enjoy putting up when I taught school. (And then as a volunteer in my children’s’ classes.) Or maybe they are just a way to add more clutter to my already cluttered desk! Either way….. I enjoy looking up from my key board and seeing something other than the innumerable reminder lists that I write to myself!