This post is part of the weekly Hodge Podge feature with Joyce from From This Side of the Pond.

1. Thursday (Oct 13) is National Train Your Brain Day. What do you do to keep your brain in tip-top shape? Is it helping?

I don’t have any specific activities I do to keep my brain in shape – like crosswords or Sudoku or something similar, but I do try to read non-fiction books and watch documentaries. I’m also homeschooling my children, which keeps my brain working every day, but sometimes it also turns it into overwhelmed mush.

2. You can sit with anyone in the world and ‘pick their brain’…whom do you choose? Tell us why? 

Can they be dead or alive? Because if it is dead it would be C.S. Lewis to ask him what convinced him that there was a God when he believed there wasn’t one for so long.

If it is someone alive it would be Jordan Peterson because he is absolutely brilliant, and I’d like to ask him what the heck he was thinking with some of his Tweets over the last several months. Ha!

3. What’s something happening in the world (or your corner of it) right now that you have trouble ‘wrapping your brain around? 

 I’m not going to go political here, even though I want to, other than to say we need to protect the minds of our children, especially during the puberty and young adult years where they are heavily influenced by social media, the general media, celebrities, and very skewed ideas of what is normal. There are ideas and ideology being pushed at our young children which can ruin their entire lives.

What I can’t wrap my mind around are adults not standing up and helping to guide young people who are lost and being told actions that will harm them physically for life will cure them from feeling like they don’t fit in.

4. On a scale of 1-10 where do you fall in the pumpkin fanclub? (1=blech, 10=make it all pumpkin all the time) Tell us something delicious you’ve tasted recently that had some pumpkin in it somewhere. 

I’m probably a five in the pumpkin club. I can take it or leave it. I like it as pie, but I’m not a fan of pumpkin spice in everything from coffee to cereal to bagels, like the ones I picked up last week on clearance when I was grocery shopping. And no, I didn’t eat them. My husband did, however.  Not sure what he thought. I would like to try pumpkin soup someday and I don’t mind pumpkin spice candles.

5. Share a favorite song, book, or movie with an autumn title, setting, or vibe. 

Anne of Avonlea is a book I read not too long ago and I remember a lot of it taking place during the fall. The first book, Anne of Green Gables, though, is where the famous quote that every Instagram bookstagrammer uses every autumn is from: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” The full quote is: “Oh, Marilla,” she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill—several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”

6. Insert your own random thought here.

In honor of Angela Lansbury, The Husband and I watched two episodes of Murder She Wrote last night and we have more than a couple of questions. Two of our biggest are: how many nieces and nephews does this woman have? She’s always visiting a niece of nephew somewhere. Also, does anyone else notice that someone dies no matter where this woman goes. If I was one of her many nieces or nephews, I’d ask her to please not come visit, out of fear one of my friends might drop dead.