This happens every year. This year I think the inauguration of Autumn baking thoughts happened when our daughter and I were watching B carve Halloween Pumpkins for our little family. But dancing skeletons evolved into dancing sugarplums. Or perhaps it was watching Charlie Brown’s great pumpkin that evolved into musings of pumpkin bread Christmas.

I love the distraction of post-Halloween plans. I mean I put up a few decorations for Halloween, and I think some decor is fun for the Holiday, but I see some people do an overload of focusing on evil and finding that humorous. For example, each year the neighbor behind us picks some dark theme and decorates accordingly. This neighbor is technically not on our street. But the upstairs master bedroom has a deck/patio that can view our backyard. Some years ago, with the rere-lease of It, for Halloween, the neighbor hung a massive decorative sheet from his upstairs bedroom patio so everyone at the end of our street, or anyone who dared take a detour down our street would have a clear leave nothing to the imagination view of Pennywise and all his bloody-faced glory, having no regard for little ones who might be traumatized by seeing a glimpse.

Unfortunately, when another neighbor asked them to take it down and to keep in mind those little and innocent trick-or-treater’s eyes who should be protected from seeing that, the neighbor saw himself as a self-appointed messenger doing everyone a favor and said, “Mind your own business, besides kids will see it eventually.” Lord, have mercy! We had the displeasure of seeing that nightmare one Halloween, but thankfully on the flip side, those same neighbors have not used their back deck since then to hang anything.

Now, I am not trying to portay myself as an innocent. I read Stephen King as a teenager and an early twenty-something, but my time reading dark literature was satisfied after I finished It. My late Granny took all five of the grandkids (I am the oldest) to the circus every year as youngsters when Ringling Brothers were in town, so I grew up liking clowns. However, the novel about Pennywise changed my appreciation of clowns and they ceased being fun. That novel really changed my simplistic view because apparently, clowns are not always happy.

Who can explain the nonsensical ramblings of a Jenn? Certainly not I. And that may or may not have any correlation to anything, When all of a sudden, my little brain thinks snowmen, more specifically, giggling about Olaf’s sweet ignorance of being a happy snowman in summer. And then there’s the fragrance of cinnamon inspired goodies like baking gingersnaps, pumpkin bread or snickerdoodles! Yum! Maybe it was because we had a short ‘bout of cooler temperatures, that reminded me of winter, though I’m about three weeks early… which then inspired me to think snowflakes again and cause me to bake because why wouldn’t I associate gingersnaps with autumn? They go together. Then winter solstice and just a few days later Christmas? Or maybe it was when my 2-year-old handed me a book to read her – the story about how that green thief who stole Christmas.

Praise God for all these distractions with my surgery coming up so there’s zero opportunity to fixate on worrying when I know God’s in control.