I Got the Fever . . .
Dear Special Readers,
I got the fever. The fever for fall.
I love autumn. I love everything about it.
I love the weather. I love the colors. I love the foliage.
I love that this is the only time of year when I can allow myself to say foliage, which is right up there with galoshes as the most annoying word in the English language.
I love the holidays.
I love the holidays where you get to dress up like a freak.
And I love Halloween too.
I love gathering around the table to feast with family. I love breaking out the fine china.
I love the styrofoam plates with divider curbs that keep the cranberry sauce from seeping into the mashed potatoes and gravy.
I love this ceramic violin and mandolin set that never seemed to appear relevant.
I love gathering around the fake backdrop of trees on a beautiful fall day that someone else took a photo of so that you could later take your photo next to that photo.
I love gathering around the cafegymatorium for elementary school programs. I love elementary school programs where your only role is to sweep up leaves.
I love a roaring fire in the fireplace thanks to the wood you chopped down but made your five-year-old haul home.
So I want to soak up these days a bit more. As such, I have been scaling back my blog time these past two weeks. Writing a bit less, posting a bit less, reading a bit less. All of the above.
But I’m still here! And rest assured that I live in a region where the autumn season ends before the campaign season dies.
And in a few short weeks a snowstorm will move in and winter will be here. And I’ll be back to hunkering down around the heat of my laptop — just as Laura Ingalls once did out on the prairie. And I’ll be back to sharing my childhood tales of torture — just as Laura Ingalls once did out on the prairie. Except with a little less Plague and a lot more Pop Rocks.
And please stay tuned this Friday! I will be showcasing a very special What the . . . Friday video. I can’t wait to share it with you!
Your Friend in Flashbacks,
Angie Z.
Childhood Relived 
When I saw your title, my immediate thought was Pringles, but fall’s good too. Missing you in the blogosphere.
I’m coming back soon! I’m still sort of around. But not as much. And because of this comment, I put Pringles on my grocery list for the first time since 1997. Damn you.
Congrats again on being Freshly Pressed! It was a good one!
so with you about loving autumn. Has to be my favourite season
What is there not to love about it? I wrote this before I saw Barb’s comment down yonder. Oh.
Wow. How am I THIS excited to see what video you have for Friday? Probably as excited as if your mom suddenly turned to me and said, “Yes. You CAN take that mandolin off the wall and play with it.”
I’m glad you’re enjoying the foliage before you have to break out the winter galoshes and pretend you like us again. ;)
Cafegymatorium. YES.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you and Babs risking your lives for the Pier One hanging wall utensils. This mandolin-violin set is right up your alley.
How can I not pretend to like you people? You send me damn good stuff. (I write this with a plastic mustache hanging above my top lip.)
what happens when you say ‘foliage’ out of season? Does it cause natural disasters? I’m a little worried that some major catastrophes may have resulted from an uninformed slip of the tongue. . . .
I wonder if there’s an Olan Mills fansite, where everyone posts their family pictures. If not, there should be ™. Happy Autumn!
When you say ‘foilage’ out of season, I appear out of nowhere and toss Pop Rocks in your mouth. It’s cruel but still legal for me to do so.
Olan Mills might be to a camera what Bob Ross was to oils and acrylics. Irrelevant?
Everything is relevant.
Ooh, your comment “everything is relevant” reminds me of I Heart Huckabees. Love that flick. Except it sort of bends your brain in half.
It’s ok to take a break! (says the girl who has only been posting once every two weeks.) Autumn is so wonderful. My mom almost even named me Autumn, but I was born on the last day of summer, like a jerk. And I guess she didn’t like the name Summer. I do, but I guess I don’t get a say.
Looking forward to Friday!
Actually, it’s been more like three weeks now, and I’m DYING to read more about the adventures of The Middlest Sister. :)
Stay tuned! Halloween story coming soon :)
Yeah, but it takes you like hours upon hours to do your blog posts. I would produce one of those every year, like a farmer’s almanac or something.
I can’t imagine you as anything but Nicki, although Autumn is pretty swell.
Did you just have a birthday last month? Happy belated birthday!
I so love the violin and mandolin on the wall! Not odd in the slightest. We had this gigantic wooden fork and spoon on our kitchen wall. My older brother used to chase me around the house with the fork when my parents were out.
Loved all the photos, especially the family portrait. You guys were groovy-licious.
Enjoy your fall break, dearest Angie. We miss you, we may be sad, but we understand (said the girl that can barely crank out one post a week now….)
I was still laughing at the wall instruments when I read about the Maineiac being chased with a wooden wall fork. Because of my siblings we only had boogars on our walls.
You poor, poor child with your booger wall decor. Although, the 70s was really all about green.
By the way, your Dynomite! family photo is going to be up soon, among a few other submissions. I’m thinking next Wednesday. I’ll try to make you proud.
It’s so funny that you’d say that. When I was living in Australia, I actually found a giant wooden wall fork, with a handle that was carved with figures like a totem pole. I took it back to my house, and kept it in my room. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put it on the wall, because we weren’t allowed to make holes in the walls, and it was too heavy for sticky tack, but that fork was one of the coolest pieces of random junk I’ve ever had the privilege of finding. :)
What a coincidence. We had a giant fork, a giant spoon AND loads of boogers on our walls. When my dad had to chisel those fossilized boogers off to wallpaper, that was a day of cursing.
Emily, Emily and Muddled: I wish I still had that fork. So I could chase my brother with it. He’s much older now and doesn’t run as fast. Also: we had fossilized boogers on our walls, too. Go figure with six kids in the house.
Yeah, I think sticky tack was just an all around bad idea anyway. I wonder if they ever got all the bright blue sticky tack off my dorm room walls.
Just about any ordinary item made giant and turned into a wall hanging is very chic.
Of course your older brother chased you around with that wooden fork. Take something with absolutely no functional purpose and any kid with half an imagination will come up with something to use it for. And that right there, my friend, is called ingenuity.
No joke. You know the stick part of the old window shades? My children removed the sticks and used them as light sabers. I suppose it’s my own fault for introducing them to Star Wars when my younger son was only four…
If you live in an area that serves donuts at the cider mill, please eat one for me. Here there are no donuts at the cider mill, and all you get is a dirty look for asking.
Holy crap, your children are geniuses! They just might invent the internet someday! I dig their crazy imagination.
I have no idea about anything you described there other than what donuts are. What’s a cider mill?
I thought judging by the groovy 70’s theme to the pics, that the fever you had was Saturday Night Fever!
Ha! There is of course that too. I also have a fever for more cowbell.
What would we have done without Olan Mills photography studios. For years I mistakenly thought it was ‘Alan’ Mills. What the hell kinda of name is ‘Olan’. And why did they take such horribly embarrassing photos?
The name Olan reminds me of the name Olaf. And this level of studio photography seems quite fitting for a man named Olaf.
Go enjoy it! We’re in the middle of an indian summer here and I love that it’s so warm while the leaves are turning. Autumn is wonderful… :)
Yay for autumn! If I could drink it out of a coffee mug, I would.
I love fall too, further cementing our conjoined-twins status. Halloween and Thanksgiving are by far the top holidays. Christmas can suck a big candy cane.
Christmas does suck. And so does Fourth of July and every day in the summer. I’m from Germanic farm stock and we shrivel in warm weather. We’re a hearty people.
If you lived in my city, I’d suggest we go as conjoined twins for Halloween. Wouldn’t that be about the greatest inappropriate costume of all time? Maybe just a notch below your Abu Ghraib prisoner costume.
I think my sister and I have a portrait in front of that same fall backdrop. Had to be all the rage in 83.
Didn’t everybody have that backdrop? Also at Christmas there’s the one in front of the window, but there’s, like, snow. And the school ones with the laser beams shooting around behind you. Fabulous.
Laser beams shooting around behind you! Yes! I have a fantastic school photo submission for my next Dynomite! contest (thank you, Misty). I don’t wan’t get you too excited but it might involve Halley’s Comet.
That’s the beauty of the pre-photographed nature backdrops — we all get to have the same photos. Just switch out the family and you’re good to go.
OMG! I wore that Underdog costume for Halloween, too! He was my favorite super(?)hero, followed closely by Superchicken.
Superchicken was a hero? I thought that was the $5.99 special down at Kentucky Fried?
Nope. Super Chicken (sorry about the previous misspelling) had a sidekick (Fred), a mild-mannered alias (Henry Cabot Henhouse III), and an egg-shaped vehicle called the Super Coupe. Not to mention a theme song that may be one of the most insidious earworms of all time. (I can’t get the squawking out of mind, even several decades later.) I should find that on YouTube and destroy my own kids’ minds…
I had to look it up myself, Peg. I feel so inadequate. It does look awfully familiar. I posted the theme song in my comment below.
I wish I could claim that I’m the kid behind that mask, but it is in fact my brother. Given the choice, and given the ability to communicate (I was an infant at the time), I probably would’ve lobbied for Sweet Polly Purebred.
Wow! I thought I’d just hallucinated Super Chicken! You mean he really existed? Super!
What’s super is that link! Thanks! My kids would thank you, too, but they’re busy having their brains melted down by the Super Chicken theme song.
My kids went through something similar today when I found the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon on Netflix. When they come to, I’ll introduce them to Super Chicken.
love the nostalgia and the season. I think we had similar childhoods
Love your gravatar! One of my favorite holiday cartoon specials. Second only to The Great Pumpkin.
Charlie Brown is my hero. the lovable loser who keeps trying to kick that elusive football
Lovable loser is a perfect description for Chuck.
See..now…you optimistic fall fanatics depress me even more. Night gloom begins sooner. The air becomes made of ice cubes. And here in the NorthWest, we won’t see the sun again until next July. (This is where all the Twilight vampires live, remember?) And now you’re bubbling with the virtues of autumn? Bah Humbug.
Okay…I’ll join in with this little bit: No more yardwork. *yea and jazz hands.*
Yeah, you got a point there on the night gloom, Barb. That really sucks. I wilt in the summer months though, so I welcome fall weather to cool things off. Although, I do miss throwing my kids in the car half-dressed and in flip-flops. Leaving the house takes ten minutes longer now.
I see your jazz hands and I raise you fist pump.
It is funny. When I was a kid my favorite holiday was of course Christmas, because I was a greedy little twerp. But now it’s like – Christmas again? And as a kid I didn’t care much for Thanksgiving because all you did was eat, and there were no gifts. Now I’m like – someone else will cook an actual homemade dinner for me? Yes!
Ugh! Didn’t the Christmas season used to start in December? Longest holiday ever. I can’t take it by the time the holiday actually rolls around. It’s like the biggest build-up and the biggest letdown.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday in the entire world. Food for me equals love.
The violin-and-mandolin wall hangings are cracking me up. Just so you know, we (the workings behind DirtNKids) are missing you on WP. Loved this post. :)