welcome, daylight savings

Fall back. Kind of sounds like a nice euphemism for reclining into a nice EZ chair. Once the leaves had long since made an exit stage left, we were left with an atypically long and eventually colourless grey autumn, wrought with weird temperature - icy cold one minute, shirk out of your hoodie the next - and of course abysmal looking tree skeletons everywhere reaching their hands up to apathetically snag the listless wisps of cloud drifting by in the pale sea above. Though Halloween was the warmest I ever recall, the boys managing to stay warm enough to loot 2/3rds of a pillowcase worth each, the sky lost its healthy azure glow and turned to a sickly pastel blue a good three weeks ago, exhausted, devoid of any energy or enthusiasm for the extended season.

I'm perhaps naive this way, in that I believe there are no coincidences. This year, the seasons are impeccably attuned to my particular state of being. It might be the other way 'round, but no matter how you slice it, we're in sync this year. After weeks of working like a madwoman I'm at a particularly crucial junction, both professionally and personally, publicly and privately. I spent October digging up skeletons, wrestling with them, watching them dance off into the sunsets one or two or bunches at a time. I laughed, I cried, I regressed, I grew. As I sit here watching the new computer upload thumbnails of my photolibrary 2 or 3 frames per second - college, my first wedding, the old house, the boys as babies, as toddlers, as kindergarteners; my trips to the states, my trips to Europe, my trips around Canada; my marriage to Bill, the renos on this house, the subtraction of my beloved cats and dog and the addition of Madisyn and then Serejane to my family; Christmases and birthdays and anniversaries, my fathers death; friends, family, clients - as the old computer mirrors it with the deletion of those same thumbnails, it seems only fitting that we got hit with the white stuff tonight. And it's daylight savings day, to boot.

I am ready to say goodbye to the busy, exciting, chaotic, and sometimes caustic months that were Autumn 2007, as I bask in that deafening silence that always accompanies the first snowfall of the year look forward to reaping the benefits of the seeds I have sown and harvested. November will be a month of inventory - taking careful stock of all that has been collected, collecting the cream, driving onward and upward, in preparation for showing off, with no small amount of flourish and fanfare, all that I have been working towards as it comes to fruition in the next 8 weeks. I share this with my sister, who will receive that almighty piece of paper with her name extended by a P-H-D on it in December.

I just wish I had listened more closely to the forecast - we should have put the firepit and chair and garden hose away yesterday while the sun was still shining, dammit. Luckily, I live in Alberta, and will likely have the opportunity tomorrow or Monday to slip into my tankini and sunhat to shlupp the snow off it all and put it in the garage where it belongs...

Comments

Babzy said…
Beautifully written. Skeleton trees. mmm-m Love it.
alphonsedamoose said…
This little skiff will all melt tomorrow or Tuesday. Glad to see you are back.
Tanya said…
Hmm reading this reminds me we need to put away our garden hose to, thanks for the reminder.
ticblog said…
Yeah - we have tonnes of stuff to put away still - haha!

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