Hibernation Practice

Fall is here for keeps this time, and that means remembering how to dress for 55º weather (answer: a medium-weight sweater, a light field jacket, and an extra scarf in the bottom of your bag like a security blanket) again. Every year there's a premature calm as the air cools down and the space inside your head opens its windows again and you look at words like "cinnamon" and sound them out as though they're slowly recovered memories. But after that---and here we are right now---comes the mild panic of realizing that you needed new jeans in April but never did anything to solve the problem before skirt weather arrived. That the duvet has been coverless since it was relegated to storage for four months. That yes, IF you wait long enough the empty flowerpots on the deck will be hidden with snow, but we're really not quite at that point yet and they're taunting you when you look out the kitchen window with your coffee every morning.

Behold: a new duvet cover in the subtlest ivory check, woven out in organic cotton. Thank you Muji!

Everything lately is busy and cloudy, and the former is only somewhat evened out by the latter. I started doubling down on keeping a to-do list in my phone and I'm not sure what's better for me, the satisfaction of ticking items off, or the tiredness that comes with doing so. The temptation to hibernate early is a compelling one, but stubbornness works wonders. 

Tonight it's baseball, and the sting of watching the (now officially, historically bad) 45-110 Baltimore Orioles  play the 105-51 Boston Red Sox at Fenway. While I'm a Bad Baseball Fan for admitting this, I'd really rather not be moping through the game tonight under these circumstances. What could make this worse, you ask? That's a great question, and the answer is that I'm going to the game on Wednesday as well. What can you do?

This past week's dahlia share featured this goth beauty that was bigger than my cat's head.

No work for me on Friday, Cynthia and Jason are getting married and I get to be there (which makes me so happy). This has been such a strange year for everyone I know, it seems like. I feel relieved when the changes taking place are good ones and not bad ones, but I wish there were more good to outweigh everything else. The worse things get in the world at large, the more motivating it is to try and make tiny improvements in our personal worlds. I'm still impatient and mean, but I've been getting better at making the bed in the morning. Maybe that's a first step to bigger and grander improvements, but if it comes to nothing I at least appreciate having a tidy place to come home to in the evening.