All of a sudden summer seems to be gone. The early morning is so cool that a long sleeved shirt is comfortable. And a bathrobe over the "jammies" doesn't feel bad, either.

I wish we could change it and just have three seasons-spring, summer and fall. It's just cool enough to sleep good at night and you don't have snow and sleet to contend with. Now doesn't that sound good? Of course, there would be no snow days for the kids. But again, no windshields to clear or sidewalks to shovel.

With just three seasons, we have a longer spring, a longer summer(more beach vacations!) which would mean a longer growing season, and a longer fall to enjoy the beauty of nature. Now doesn't that sound good?

Thursday I found some tiny little rubber bands and asked Brittany if she wanted me to make her some pig tails. She agreed and I braided her hair. When I got finished, she reached up and asked me,"What are dees?" and I told her. Then I asked her if she wanted to see how she looked and she nodded, so I held her up to the mirror. Her eyes just sparkled and she reached up again and touched one, and said, "Oink, Oink". She oinked on and off until Kerri came to get her.

Have you ever noticed that kids can say the funniest things? For instance, one of my granddaughters, who shall remain nameless, asked me if I had any of that"idolized" salt.

Now, as I write I'm listening to the vice-presidential debate. Something about John Edwards makes me want to pop him in the nose. I hate the way he talks with his hands bobbing around with his thumbs extended. Matter of fact, I don't think Kerry or Edwards could "debate" at all if they didn't have hands. In my opinion, Mr. Cheney won this debate.

I remember the last summer we went to Portsmouth before Douglas died. I used to get up early and sneak out and sit on the back porch steps and "meditate". One morning I was sitting out there watching the grass grow and thinking how much I would hate leaving to go back to Danville, when I heard the kitchen door open and Douglas came out, dressed except for his feet, which were in some sort of scuffy type bedroom shoes. He had two cups of coffee in his hands and offered me one and sat down beside me.(That was the only time I ever drank coffee with milk-but that was how he took his so he made mine the same way). We sat and companionably drank coffee for a while, then he started to talk.

He was in a serious mood and told me that for all of his adult life he had loved Geraldine and was so glad that "she" had finally caught "him". He said that he might not tell her often enough but he hoped that his actions conveyed how much he loved her. He went on to tell of the moves to S.C. and to Portsmouth that he knew she didn't want to make, but that she did them without hardly any "squawking"( his word, not mine), and how much he loved her for that. He mentioned how hard she had worked at the soda shop in Reidsville, but had done that, too without fussing. Here I interrupted to say," but that was because she loved you, too". He went on to say that once he saw Geraldine, he never looked at another girl, that she was "The girl of his dreams".

After he died, I started thinking that Geraldine would probably like to know about this conversation, so I wrote her a long letter and told her what he had said that early summer morning when the dew was still on the grass and the neighborhood was sleeping. She wrote back right away and thanked me for telling her. She said and I quote,"He'd told me the same thing on occasion, and I hate to admit it, but I sort of took it with "a grain of salt". But if he cared enough to tell you, then he really must have meant it--thank you for telling me. My main regret is that I didn't take his lil expressions of love seriously enough."

Speaking of shorts, seems like he had a pair of tan ones that weren't really shorts, but were cut off pants Geraldine had hemmed. I think he snagged a good sized hole in the lower leg and they were too new to throw away. You who knew him knew how thrifty he always was. But even so, he always wore them with his brogans.

Another time when we were in Portsmouth, he gathered a car load of us together and took us to ride the rollercoaster at Virginia Beach. At the time, that was the highest rollercoaster in the U.S. and I really didn't want to get on it, but he insisted and I ended up sitting next to him and he hollered and carried on until I got over being scared. I still don't know if he was for real or faking it cause I was scared to death!