Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Insomniac's Guide to Fall List-Making

For me, Fall is a season of List-Making.  Actually, I'm always making lists, so maybe it's just me...

I woke up this morning to a solid, steady, even downpour of rain and the forecast of a 40-degree night, which means Fall is so here.  Also, to my phone ringing like four times in a row at the crack of 8:05 a.m., after having a night of insomnia and flopping around from 1:48-3:19 a.m., being too hot and thirsty to sleep, because it's also the time of year when we build a fire before bed, to keep from turning on the forced air heat, and then the house temperature goes to like 85 degrees and we are sweating like malaria patients, even sleeping naked on top of the covers with the window wide open, but I digress, sort of.  What I was thinking about while lying there waiting for the buildup of excess hot air in the room to whoosh out the window so I could possibly sleep, was...well, ok, it's fall.  And I'm a Summer Person.  Not in the sense that I was color draped in the 80s and I'm a "summer" (I was a "winter", in case you're wondering, but I make my own rules) but, in the sense that I more or less disapprove of any season that isn't:  Summer. 

So-

Good-bye, blanket on the grass with a book.  Good-bye hot sun on my shoulder.  Good-bye roses and beach waves and sunscreen and lunch in the porch swing.  When fall arrives here in Idaho, it's pretty much overnight.  Friday it was 78 and gorgeous outside.  Which was awesome, except that I was stuck inside, working on a *cough* wedding cake *cough*.  I won't explain this right now, other than to say, it was  one I couldn't say no to, and it turned out AWEsome, see?

My first wedding cake after 7 months of no cakes.  I still don't miss them, but it was gratifyingly pretty.
 I may explain more later, because there's a sweet but very sad story here, but it doesn't concern us today, other than it caused me to miss the last perfectly blue day of summer, but I'm not sorry.

So, in my 3 a.m. insomnia mode, my mind wandered a bit, and I got thinking of a list of things I like and don't like about fall.  And then I got thinking about lists in general, which made me think about omg I have so many things to remember to DO.  Which made me feel even more awake, and I know myself well enough to know that if I'm that awake at 2:30 a.m., I may as well be doing something productive, so I got up and went out in the living room, put another log on the fire (why in the HECK?? I don't even know--habit, I guess), and sat on the couch and scribbled (with a pen and paper, which was a treat--remember handwriting?two full pages of a list of things I need to do, mostly right now or at the very least this week.  Or possibly next week, or even next month.  I'm actually still remembering things not to forget, which should go on the List. 

But at 2:30 this morning, what started it all was sort of a Yay/Boo list of fall things, like this:

Yay:  Fall boots and scarves!  Boo:  I have summer sandals I didn't even wear yet. 

Yay: I can close up the garden and sit inside and cross stitch without feeling guilty that I'm wasting a gorgeous day NOT outside!  Boo:  I still have a page-long list of things that needed done outside before the weather turned.

Yay:  Pumpkin spice lattes!  Boo:  I HATE pumkin-flavored anything.  Except pie, which is actual pumpkin and doesn't count.  And candles, which make it seem like I made a pie, which is even better than making one, sort of.   What is it with the pumpkin spice things, by the way? Pumpkin and coffee don't belong together, to me.

Yay:  The 23-year-old Celica I now share with my daughter has no A/C, and now that fact totally won't even matter. (People, you haven't lived til you've gone back to a car with no A/C).  Boo:  I'm still sharing a 23-year-old Celica with my daughter, instead of this:

or this:

I need a tissue....

moving on:

Yay:  Carving pumpkins!  Boo:  I suck at carving pumpkins, always have.  The pumpkin-as-art gene skipped me.  I look at a pumkin and I see...nothing.  Remember that dorky jack-o-lantern gap-toothed grinning face with triangles for the eyes from first grade?  That's still pretty much my level. The whole carving a pumpkin to look like an intricate punched-tin lantern or a realistic caricature with a pipe that puffs real smoke just does.not.happen for me.

Yay:  The kids are in school!  I have the whole house to myself!  Boo:  Oh.  Um... 

Anyhoo-

Seriously, though, I actually do like the changing of each season.  Our seasons here are definite, and yes, each one has reasons to love it.  I try not to miss Summer too much, especially since there are like 10 months of not summer here, so I try to focus on what's beautiful about each season and enjoy each one for what it is, not what it isn't, like:  Fall is just a break *after* summer.  Spring is *almost* summer.  Winter means Christmas (omg Christmas!), then on New Years Day I order spring seeds, and right after that is Spring, which is *almost* Summer! Because what I'm always waiting for, really, is this:

Louis, chilling in the shade of a rose, after a hard day of...nothing. 
 
 Right now, though, I'm trying to just enjoy the new weather--*glances out the window*--oh look, it's raining even harder, now--and look forward to the joys of each season, because really, every day is a gift, right?
Fall sky here--home of some truly amazing sunsets


P.S. - For some reason, at 2 a.m., I also got totally side-tracked by a list of great 80s music in my head, and some fun things about that decade that I still totally love, that our kids will never know...but that list doesn't belong here, because that would be too rambly.  Soon, though, I can feel a great 80s List coming.

P.P.S.- Let me just say, for the record though, if you're from the 80s--go make a "Def Leppard" station on Pandora right now; you will not regret it...
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment