I Cannot Find My Cranky Pants

And I did check under the bed, and even in the laundry hamper.

I don't know if it is in the sunshine, or that I have a lot of music running through my head- but I have been in a state of irrepressible delight. Is it the switch to oatmeal for breakfast? Or finally feeling at home here?

I am finding it impossible to even be dour toward Father William! But then, he has begun to balance out his gift for gab with actually making progress on the house, which makes me smile, and I trip out the door (literally, since there's probably lumber there that wasn't before) with a spring in my step.

It's as if I am in love.

Life is a Painting by Rockewell Kent

Well, today it is. The sun has begun its decent, for the day, for the year. I'm just happy to watch the colors as it fades. Life has slowed down appreciably now, people can catch up with one another again, passing news (my summer pupil caught a cold, and was spending a weekend away from her boarding school with family in Portland; a friend's pet crow had been run over and killed by a summer visitor), settling in with some coffee- tonight will be the first game night I have had the chance to attend since the end of spring- and as my friend pointed out, I will be two-timing him, since I will go to one game night which will probably feature coffee and dessert, and then head to another game night which will feature beer and classic rock, or perhaps more to my taste, diet coke and rum (though I did get some Geary's Autumn Ale).

This will parallel my earlier ventures out today, first heading to the cafe (it was dead and the owners had company, so my visit drifted from the cafe to the kitchen- another sign of autumn), then dropping in on my friends just up the hill from the cafe- it really is convenient, I must say. And at each place I was privileged to receive an invite. Two gatherings in one night! Let the season begin!

Walking home was a joy- there was no human traffic on the road, just deer. They have come out of hiding now that the pace has slackened. As I went by the store I'd seen movement down the road, by the walkway to the church, and wondered who was out for a walk- a little closer and I could see I was sharing the road with a doe and her fawn. They didn't run off right away (I was, after all, already on the other side of the street), but moseyed toward me a bit, before the fawn took off behind the parsonage and the doe moved onto the lawn to watch me pass, and then placidly settled in to graze. At the next house down there was another similarly matched pair that took a moment to watch me pass.

So now I am home, on the porch, swatting what I sincerely hope are the last mosquitoes of the year. It's Saturday night, and I have places to go, people to see, and the prospect of a purposeful walk in the moonlight. Tonight I am breaking out the wool coat.

In the Fall

Well, the first eight and a half months of 2008 were a blogging bust. I am okay with that.
The time was there, through the depths of winter, but my mind was not. There were books, there was sledding, there was the (thankfully unpublished) navel-gazing of my SAD.

In spring, well- I don't particularly remember spring, but I suspect my attention was on the signs of summer- and now, having summered here, I know not to anxiously anticipate summer (unless I anxiously anticipate it with something akin to dread). By the beginning of July I was wishing the whole of the season away, longing for fall, with its few weeks of sanity.

And here it is.

And the light is clear.
And the air is chilly, a light slap to the senses reminding you to attend to this, the shortest and sweetest of the seasons.

It is good to be home. Work called me away for the week. I was going to stay an extra night off, but found I just couldn't. Homesickness? A bit, yes. A Fellow's spidey-sense that there's a comp plan meeting she hadn't been informed of, but was expected at... Seven o'clock? Tonight? Sure. So yes, there may have been a bit of that too. At any rate, it was good to get on the boat in the sharp, pure light of afternoon. I didn't even mind the large crop of people out for the weekend, each with their own substantial freight. It was even nice to have demands made of my time, so that my Friday night would not be at loose ends, spent wondering what my rush was- why I felt such a pull to a place I've only been for a year.

But in a year, I had the knowledge to stay away from the flatbed to the right of the parking lot ("don't go there: you-know-who's got a Hustler he's waving around"); I got a sunny smile from the eyes of a quiet guy; when I carried a box about equal to my own volume up the dock, a man in a summer hat pointed out to his woman in khakis "now there's a Maine girl for you," a stereotype I am happy to fill (as they were filling theirs) if they just make comments and don't ask for pictures; the gears in my car shifted sweetly as I drove from the landing; though my driveway is still canyoned by a wash-out I know I can get to it tomorrow. I even created a little IAH traffic jam in the street when someone stopped me to talk.

I am home, and it is fall.

And there is no prettier sentence than that.