The First One

We had our first cool night of the season, not last night, but the night before. This is when I take a deep breath and remember that it's not so bad to live here after all. Sure, it's not exactly crisp and cool. There aren't any pretty leaves around....oh - my grandma used to send me leaves from Wisconsin every year. I'm going to really miss that. She would press them in wax paper so that they were preserved and still were colorful by the time they got to me.
It's not exactly what I remember as autumn, but it's less humid anyway. And it's a couple of degrees cooler. We take what we can get, huh? It has felt so nice! I have snatched every excuse that has come my way to sit on the porch for five minutes. Something about the air being drier makes my porch space feel like it has expanded. Maybe the humid air feels like it presses in and makes everything too close and yucky.
I guess there's something of a Midwestern girl in me still. I still long for a real seasonal change and for a cold snap in September. I can't help checking the weather forecast, maybe even twice a day, willing the temperatures to dip under 70 at night. I like sweaters and hot apple cider. And stew. It's too hot here for stew.
We do have a few, subtle shifts that occur in the fall, though. We drove by a tree today that reminded me. These trees - I have no idea what kind they are - bloom out with pink lantern-shaped flower pod things, if that makes any sense at all. They start out bright and fade to a soft peach and then they fall off the trees. Since Emma was born in October, I clearly remember watching a tree of the same kind through my living room window. Those first few weeks, all I could do was just sit there and hold her and stare out the window from my sofa. And I loved watching that tree's gentle transformation. Sometime in November, a good breeze will rattle the tree's limbs and make those pale petals sift down toward the grass. Granted, it's not a brightly-colored maple leaf, but it is certainly romantic in its own right.
So, having been energized by the slight change in weather, I cleaned my room today. The room was in such a state, that I did not finish cleaning it today. I did clear out a pile of junk that has been under my nightstand since we remodeled the room, uh, a year and a half ago.
Now, I'm wearing new fall-ish pajamas (brown soft pants with orange and teal and red polka dots...and an orange shirt) and enjoying my clean desk. Wishing I could have a cup of my daddy's famous cinnamon coffee. Four days and counting until I can (I hope) have coffee again.

DAILY BLISS: Accomplishing a few itty-bitty, nitty-gritty chores, fresh hair color and hearing a piece on the radio that I played in all-state band when I was in high school. Oddly enough, I still knew my part. Something kicked in, unbidden, right before the woodwinds were featured, and I started singing the bassoon part. The subconscious mind is a funny thing.