friday i'm in love

Summer has been long. And it's been hot. I've found myself feeling rather oppressed on more than one occasion. I know that's silly, but I really wanted to go outside and run around and be free. But when I would try I would melt and my hair would shrivel up and my mind would get all foggy with the humidity.

I really have not known quite what to do with myself since May.

"What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon," cried Daisy, "and the day after that, and the next thirty years?"
"Don't be morbid," Jordan said. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall." -Gatsby, Fitzgerald (Don't make fun. I'm re-reading it for book club, of course.)

This morning I woke up, went outside, and Fall was here. If I had walked a mile from the apartment to the car, it wouldn't have been long enough to drink in all the loveliness of Fall this morning. She had pulled out all the tricks to make me fall in love with her all over again. There was a breeze through the trees. There was a rustling of leaves. The air felt crisp--it's usual dampness hiding out to make room for Fall's debut. The clacking of my boots on the pavement reminded me of the crunching of the leaves I use to rake in our big back yard in New Jersey. And I could see all the enchanted Falls of my past. I could smell the air on those first days of Fall in Utah Valley. Fall always smells of newly formed ideas, and it sounds like the whispered promises of adventure.

And what do those whispers say?

They say picnics in the park. They say morning runs in the cool air. They say hot cocoa and apple cider and whipped cream on top of fat pumpkin pies. They say maroon is once again the new hot pink and that I can pull out the pea coats and knee-high boots and eventually my fuzzy hats. They say long walks around the university-- holding hands. They say pumpkins. The orangest, plumpest pumpkins in the land. Ripe for the carving of their faces and the scooping of their guts and the baking of their seeds. But in a pleasant way, ya know?


But mostly they say that the world is falling in love with itself all over again.

Happy first day of Fall, friends!