It’s fall. It’s definitely fall. I don’t care that we’ve had the first warm stretch since 2003 and I don’t care that I had a blissful prolonged float in the pool (which is rather rare because in order to be wet and also above the warm water without getting too cold, the air temperature must be in the 80s) and have a line of demarcation across the tops of my formerly Victorian pale melons, it is definitely fall. There is a sort of light change going on. Not just the fact that when I wake up in the morning at my insanely early hour, it’s still dark, which means that I’m going to have to finally figure out how to use the fancy sunrise alarm clock Esteban got me for my birthday in June.
No, there’s something different at play here, something about how the angle of the light is softer, more diffused, creating shadows where before there were none, making stars out of objects that had been backstage all season. And there is almost always a thick slick of dew on my car in the morning, not to mention these weird long albino mosquito things hanging out on the sunroof, gossiping and having tea parties between the droplets. And there were bees at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday, which means that fall is definitely here. The bees usually show up in late September, driven crazy by fermented fallen apples and so incensed by NBC’s new Thursday lineup that they’re ready to sting at the slightest provocation.
On Thursday, when I drove down to Milwaukee to attend my first class of the semester, there was this lovely fog rolling in off Lake Michigan, as though the breath of the Lake itself were yawning up onto the shore. The sky was an unusually deep periwinkle and the landscape was a study in frosted greys and muted stained glass, and yet the sun was coming off the clouds, shooting rays over the tops in that stereotypical Hallmark card way that usually screams for a bible verse to be printed in italics just below and to the left, ’cause look at all the God going on there, man. Just gobs of God no matter where you look.
This fall craziness seems to have infected everyone. Esteban has been unusually productive to the extent that I want to look for a discarded pod under his side of the bed. He cleaned out most of the garage last week, went out on an ’emergency supplies’ run for his new car (including things that I’ve never had in any of my cars, like a candle and blanket to keep from freezing when you’ve run off the road in winter and there is no cell service or passing cars and you are thinking about eating your own left foot or something) and then was so inspired by the site of his natty trunk that he took it upon himself to clean out the trunk of the M as well. My golf clubs are weeping from their spot in the garage, having the foresight to know that they probably won’t see the inside of that trunk again until Spring 2005.
I have declared martial law on (fucking) laundry and have also thought seriously of thinning my herd of 97 t-shirts (because seriously, I’ve got more than 40 white ones, and they don’t even look all that great because they are either too baggy or too short and I just end up wearing the same four white t-shirts from Eddie Bauer or Lane Bryant over and over anyway, because they’re the only ones where the shoulder seams sit right on my shoulders, instead of drooping, and yet still fit over my boobs). I also painted the front door (which, by the way, did not need to be painted, but I was sick of having a white front door and now I have a red front door. Much like a high quality bordello, but in our little post-WWII bungalow. So, a bungalello. Or a bordalow. Wow, I can see why the bungalow bordello thing never caught on.) Summer Slacker Girl has been bound and gagged and stuffed into a closet where she is desperately trying to remember the safe word. (Note: it’s ‘Captain Hook’)
I feel like writing something (and by ‘something’ I mean something fictional or serious or, rather, not serious (in an experiment spurred by a discussion with one Ms. Finger) instead of updating my silly little web journal. Truthfully, I have no excuse not to, other than the fact that my head is filled with pink attic insulation and my eyelids are heavy and there is a pain in between my shoulders from laying on two coats of primer and then seven applications of Ralph Lauren Hunting Coat Red (yeah, seven, mutha fucka Ralph Lauren). I even have a song that is feeding my imagination (which seems to be the trend when I get in a writing groove. When I finished the Car Salesman story, it was ‘The Air That I Breathe’ by the Hollies, repeated about 54 times. With the Baby Story, it was a duet of the Etoys song and The Cure’s ‘Pictures of You’) except I have nothing in my head to take advantage of this song, but for a few tendrils of stories and an urge to smack Sofia Coppola for making fabulous films that leave me breathless while also being such a pratt.
This morning, it is raining for the first time in what seems like months and the giant house spider that lives in my hibiscus topiary outside is dancing around raindrops like a Las Vegas showgirl. And soon, she’ll wrestle with a misguided fly and if we’re lucky, Esteban and I will be sitting in the garage, drinking iced tea and we’ll get to watch her drag it up into the eaves, like some crazy Cirque du Soleil act, and then we’ll go to Starbucks and then Home Depot (for the eighth time this weekend) and then steady ourselves to spend Labor Day tackling the damned Rose Bush. We’re speeding toward the equinox and all you can do is strap yourself in and get ready for impact.
