
I painted this leaf on Oct. 30, 2015, and I haven’t seen a single Maple Tree turn into similar color yet this year so Fall is definitely very late in 2017.
It was 6 o’clock and nearly dark on a rainy day that was one of those days that never really got started and I was alone in the house for the evening so I drove to the 7-11 down the road and bought a large bag of Cheetos and I came home and poured it into a big bowl (I don’t eat Cheetos straight from the bag because I AM CLASSY) and I laid down on top of my bed with a fleece blankie over me and watched three episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And then I felt much better about life.

If I could have been Cindy in this scenario, with a Taffy cat wrapped around me, I might have been able to forgo the Cheetos.
In general, I am not a “comfort eater”, I’m more of a “comfort drinker”, but Cheetos was what I needed last night, even more than a V&T.
The day before I had Cheetos for dinner, I had gone to see Blade Runner 2049. OMG, that movie was soooo s l o w. I could not stay to watch the whole thing. I had to bail after the Rachel replicant’s replicant got shot in the head, which I think was about 20 minutes before it ended, because no matter how much in love I was with Ryan Gosling’s coat, it seemed that I had been watching that movie for years and years and years and that this movie was never going to let me to leave the theater and have a normal life or ever see my cats again and Jesus, what had I done to deserve this would this movie never come to its dismal END?
Canadian designer Renee April did all the costumes, including Ryan Gosling’s coat:
“We made at least 15 coats for Ryan Gosling, as he wears one costume for the whole film. Everyone thinks his military coat is made of shearling, but it’s laminated cotton [ I love it: the coat is totally vegan ] that we painted and then attached cheap, ugly faux fur to the collar – it was $2 a yard! Leather would have become wet and very heavy in that environment, and his character is poor, he has a miserable existence in that basic apartment. The collar – pretty cool, eh? – is so he can hide himself from the pollution. We’ve seen hoods thousands of times on-screen, so I came up with a high collar that closed magnetically. I wanted the audience to just see his eyes at the beginning of the film.”
So the day after my escape from Blade Runner 2049 it rained, a dire, cold rain, and life is just a long, grimy story that you are stuck in the middle of without having any hope for a happy ending.
On days like that, you need Cheetos, a warm blankie, and some vintage Star Trek.
Last Sunday I went to one of my Fall leaf hunting grounds, a pond-centric few acres where the trees were just beginning to leaf out in colors (colors other than green, that is).
The Tulip Trees have begun to shed their tulip-shaped leaves, although their general demeanor is still Height-of-Summerish:

This is why our native Tulip Tree is called The Sequoia of the East. This is a photo of the tallest Tulip Tree in New York State on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2017, growing 167 feet above ground right here on the North Shore of Long Island.
This being New York, someone had thrown a bagel into the water of the pond near the Tulip Tree grove, where it was pursued by some large carp-like fish:
The fish could not chomp into the bagel so they eventually nosed iy against the shore, where they lost interest in it and swam away:
Long and short, I did not find a Perfect Fall Leaf, one that I could paint in every color of the season. So the search continues.
Last week’s blog post disappeared from the inter webs, and I suspect Lickety’s big butt had a, er, hand in it . . .
. . . and since so many of you Dear Readers asked What’s up with the Queen Mother? I will tell you that I started out, last week, with a fun quote from the Lewis Carroll story, Alice Through the Looking Glass, when Alice meets the talking chess piece, The White Queen.

Portrait of Marco, Queen Victoria’s beloved Pomeranian, on the Queen’s breakfast table, by Charles Burton Barber (1893). Victoria was amused. Keep reading: This will become relevant in just a moment.
The White Queen tells her:
“I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (Breakfast, queens, see: pomeranian, above.)
And that’s when I wrote that Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, was 101 years, seven months, and 26 days old when she died in 2002. Lewis Carroll could not imagine a Queen of such great age, and he was pretty imaginative, but here’s proof that queens can do the impossible.
I forget what point I was trying to make, but it seems that there is one, in there, somewhere.
Have a great leaf-hunting weekend, everyone. May all your impossible things be made possible.