October Chill & Sychronicities

October inches onward, the chilly weather finally kicking in a couple days ago. Last weekend was very warm and humid, which felt absolutely wrong for October. At church Sunday many comments about this were heard, considering how the favorite subject of conversation amongst parishioners is usually "the weather". Rain fell most of Sunday afternoon, which I spent pleasantly curled up on the porch reading a book. By Wednesday morning, the north wind was blowing, and temperatures plummeted to more normal levels. I bundled up in a winter coat and scarf for my morning walk today and yesterday.

To quickly update, our crops are all harvested now. Soybeans were combined by our neighbor last week, and on Saturday our remaining corn was combined, too. Husband decided a few years ago to hire someone to plant and combine our corn. It saves him the stresses of trying to maintain a planter and combine, both very expensive pieces of machinery. He has enough to do with taking care of the cows each day, and worrying about baling hay in the summer and filling silo in the fall.

This afternoon I'm baking two pans of bars to take to the weekly Thursday night football team supper at the high school. Pumpkin bars and Mississippi Mud bars, with candy corn sprinkled on top of the frosting for a seasonal touch. As I was putting the beaters in the mixer to make the first batch of frosting, my cell phone beaped indicating an incoming text message. The message was from my college daughter, saying, "thanks for the beaters."! My first thought was, "What"!? Did she know I had just put the beaters in the mixer??? But, she was referring to the "wife-beater" t-shirts I had sent her in the mail because she told me she needed some. (I don't really care for the nickname "wife-beaters", but that's what the kids call the shirts.) Anyway, it was a cute little coincidence.

Another interesting little synchronicity/coincidence occurred last week. My older son, who is in college two hours away, recently found out he has mononucleosis. He had been having headaches and running a temperature. Then last week he also had the very sore throat that can be part of the mono experience. We talked on the phone Wednesday evening, and I could tell he was miserable, his throat very swollen and sore. He had been to the campus clinic and was given antibiotics and a steroid to help with the swelling. As I lay in bed that night I thought about making a batch of tapioca pudding for him, something I used to do quite often when the kids were little. By Friday night, though, he was feeling much improved, thankfully. On Sunday afternoon he called and as we were talking he said, "Hey, Mom, guess what I made........a batch of tapioca pudding."! I said, "You're kidding!" He has never made tapioca pudding before, and I had not mentioned to him that I had thought of it. He actually had bought the kind of tapioca that has to be soaked overnight, so he really made the authentic version. I had always used the quick tapioca that needed to soak for only 20 minutes.

Anyway, it was interesting. We had not discussed tapioca pudding at all. Were thoughts moving from me to him, or from him to me? I wonder who thought of the pudding first......was it me as I lay in bed that night? Or did my son think of it first that night and somehow his thought was transferred to my thoughts? I find all of this fascinating even though I'm sure many people would scoff.