Tuesday, Nov. 11

The fall colors are fading, and withered, crisp, leaves are blanketing the ground. Some trees are wintry bare already. These photos show late autumn hues, including browns and rusts.

We slept late this morning, and didn't get up until 8 a.m. on this Veteran's Day. Since there was a threat of rain, we waited for a while before hanging the flag outdoors. We were anxious to display "Old Glory" in honor of veterans, including members of our family who served, as well as for the men and women (including my granddaughter) who are currently serving.

After breakfast and a treadmill session, I went right to work sorting summer and winter clothes, culling out those that I'll discard. Hubbie laughed at me when he saw the giant stack of turtleneck knit shirts I have, in an assortment of colors. I've accumulated them over several years. I don't wear every one of them every year, but I have enough variations of colors to wear under sweaters during cold weather.

Basically, I wear autumn tones, so I have brown, beige, orange, orangy-red, gold, rust, periwinkle blue, and various shades of green knit shirts. Black is not really my best color, but no wardrobe is complete without some black, so I have knit turtlenecks in that color, too. Black works fine if paired with something that is in my color, like a rust jacket.

I learned a long time ago that unless a knit turtleneck shirt is stained or worn out, I shouldn't discard it, because it's so difficult to find a similar color to replace it. I can find brown and beige easily enough, but although black, white, and bright red are always in stock in the stores, autumn colors seem to run in cycles and are not offered every year.

Organizing my clothes closet spurred me to sort another closet, which led to sorting a downstairs coat closet, which led to going to the WDCS to buy a stack of plastic totes to organize things in. Now, instead of a jumble of scarves, hats and gloves on the shelf in the coat closet, Hubbie and I each have our own tote, neatly holding our individual winter gear.

Upstairs, one tote holds dressy scarves and dickies, while another stores purses. Before getting the totes, I hung my dressy scarves on one of those nifty plastic hangers with lots of holes for poking the scarves into. It was fine, and all my scarves fit on that one hanger, but the hanger was in the way in the closet. Besides, while I used to wear a lot of scarves when I worked in an office, I now rarely wear one, because there are fewer occasions to dress up.

While sorting one of the closets, we turned up a shoe box of old photos of Mother, Dad, my children, and me, which of course required that we take a walk down memory lane. I'll be wanting to make copies of some of these photos to use in scrapbooking.

Closet sorting pretty much took up the day. The only other thing I did was attend an arts council meeting at 5 p.m., which ran on until 6:30. There was a community theater board meeting tonight, too, but I decided to skip it. If anything major happened that involves me, the president can advise me by e-mail.