Yes, I’m reusing the Sunday Paper Live picture of me raking because I haven’t taken another picture - I’m too busy RAKING! (But rest assured, I do wear the same thing every single time I rake, so it would pretty much look just like this.)

(Sunday Paper, Volume III, Issue 45)

We’re already a full week into November and it’s been really November-y…

Nice fall weather - a little chill, but some warmth mixed in.

It’s my favorite kind of weather, really.

Some houses are displaying some Thanksgiving decorations while others still have the remnants of the Halloween decorations still out. (Not judging…Halloween decorations are the silliest because they have the least post-holiday staying power. So I get it if you don’t have it in you to bring them in yet.)

But it’s really in the trees where you see the teeth of November - in either the colors of the leaves…or the presence of any leaves at all.

And that’s where we pick up this week’s Sunday Paper.

I get a little obsessive about the autumn leaves.

This is the time of year, obviously, that I think about it the most. First of all, Framingham designates only a few weeks out of the year for yard clean-up - this time of year it’s a week of bundled sticks, then about four weeks of leaves in the leaf bags, and then one more week of sticks.

So there’s a lot of pressure to pick up all the leaves on the ground - in the front and the back of the house - before we’re left with bags of leaves all winter long.

But - and here’s the thing that drives me crazy, because it’s out of my control - you can’t hurry nature. And nature (read: the biggest tree in the neighborhood) usually doesn’t know that the leaf pickup deadline is fast approaching and it hasn’t dropped any of its leaves yet.

So I pick up what I can and then I sit and watch for a couple of weeks for the big tree to go bare like every other stinking tree for miles around.

There’s still a couple of weeks, though, and the big tree is actually ahead of schedule. Partly because of the wind and rain that we’ve had the past couple of weeks, I think, the tree seems to be going bare. (There have been years that it’s January before that tree loses leaves…as in, we end up with a blanket of snow covered by brown leaves because that tree only started dropping leaves in the blizzard or whatever.)

it still has a lot of leaves up there - but it’s mid-November…I think a couple of more windy days and a lot of them will come loose before early December, when the leaf pick-ups stop.

I do think it’s losing leaves ahead of its pace from recent years.

Trust me.

I’ve been watching.

Writing

*I told you last week about all the writing I’ve been doing…One quick note - I still haven’t received that check I’m waiting on, so I might be getting a couple at once, which is very exciting. And this was interesting - I had written something about the Vietnam War for that magazine I mentioned - I think it was around Memorial Day…and somewhere it must have run again, maybe because we’re nearing Veterans Day? Anyway, someone e-mailed me about it. It’s nice to hear from people reading my work, especially with something I had actually forgotten I’d written. And on top of that - she had to work to get in touch with me…my e-mail wasn’t a part of my byline. So she either e-mailed someone and asked or she sought me out in some way. So that’s nice, too. Unless she made no effort to track me down and just guessed, since the e-mail is just my first initial-last name. But still, I appreciate hearing from someone who read what I wrote.

Comedy

*Performed as the lone stand-up in a sketch show at Improv Boston last night. Also hit an open mic on Wednesday, worked out some newer stuff…I had grander plans for the week but I was laid low Thursday and Friday by kind of a sore throat. I went hoarse kind of suddenly and then felt ill Friday afternoon, and I was just tired. It could have been much worse, I suppose, and hopefully I stopped it in its tracks by resting up.

Remember, if you want to plan ahead - I’ll be at The Comedy Studio on Thanksgiving night, if you’re around and looking for something to do after your turkey dinner.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*If the leaves were me being crazy, part one, then this is me being crazy, part two. And it’s long overdue I’ve told you about it. A couple of months ago we got a new garbage pail for the kitchen. The other one was super-old and gross and I’d been campaigning to get a new one for a while and then we finally pulled the trigger on one of our Bed Bath & Beyond walk-throughs. (We…well, I…like to do that every now and again.) Anyway, it’s a little bigger and it’s so clean and sleek and it’s improved my quality of life and I think I’ve been in a better mood lately because of it.

Notes

*Since we’re talking about trees and leaves, one of our neighbors has a beautiful tree where the leaves go suddenly bright red around the first week of November and the tree looks like it’s on fire with red and it’s so beautiful…and then within a week all of those leaves just fall off the tree like they’ve planned it. And that leads to a beautiful blanket of red on the grass below the tree…but looks like a real pain to rake up every year.

*Made the first call-out on the Facebook page for questions for the end-of-the-year edition of the Sunday Paper. We’ve done a little Q & A mailbag-type of post the past couple of years and I enjoy writing that and maybe you enjoy reading it? I don’t know. But if you want to get me a question, put it either in the comments below or on the Facebook page. I got a couple last week and would love a few more…and I’d like it if I didn’t have to put another Facebook page call out, but I will if I have to. Here’s what the article looked like last year, and here’s the one from two years ago.

*Remember you can follow me on Twitter @jsucich, and the Facebook page is titled John Sucich. You can go Like that page. I’m sometimes funny in different ways on those two social mediums.

*In the meantime, one other thing about this time of year: I’ve been eating a lot of Halloween candy, as one is wont to do…but of course, since I’ve not been feeling 100%, I haven’t exercised a bit. (Well, raking doesn’t *not* count.) So maybe I’ll try to get off my butt and go for a walk today or something.