End of Summer Rant

I’ve been very social this week. This is unusual. I think Ella has been inspiring me with her insatiable zeal for…well, anybody, really. She loves people and believes she is the reason for every party. And when she gets there, she kind of is. This won’t be so cute in a few years.

All my children are social beings, although not to the extent that Ella is.

I do not know where these people came from.

Anyway, I’m not dealing well with the whole summer being over thing. I kept waiting and waiting for summer to begin and now it’s October. It seems we have skipped the most funnest season, and I am royally irked.

The trees in the backyard will throw up all their leaves soon. It was only a few months ago I finally got rid of all of the leaves from last year. These depressing turn of events make me want to curl up under a blanket and read Chekhov while eating popcorn saturated with real butter. REAL BUTTER! I think you can understand how serious this situation is. So, because I don’t want to gain 50 pounds or let my house be completely decimated by my children while I am under blanket, I’m trying to stay positive about the changing of the seasons. I’m a busy woman with lots to do. No time to mope and curse the people who invented daylight savings time… must stay connected with the general population! Must remember that spring is only, like, seven months away! Must remember that fall used to be my favorite season, what with the pumpkins and the cider and the changing leaves and all that crap.

One of these days I’m just going to up and move to Hawaii and that will be that. Pale skin, four children, volumes of Chekhov and all.

So… some of the things I didn’t get done this "summer," or our extended spring.

There was my hike the 46 high peaks of the Adirondacks project. I wanted to get at least three in by September. Ha! Ha ha ha ha ha. Hee hee. Ha.

Run a 5K.

Start my thesis.

Clean out the garage.

Have a garage-sale.

Get involved in my new church.

I remain an unfit, disorganized woman with an overload of clutter who is spiritually disconnected and disillusioned and who really needs to take a good long hike in the woods, preferably up a mountain. And I can’t get my stinking mini-van into the garage, either, which really makes me peeved.

In the spirit of the fall season, and because it is supposed to rain for the next one hundred years, I decided that today I would go to the Apple Festival and then later, take a walk with my family along the Genesee River. I accidentally fell asleep and so the Apple Fest thing didn’t work out so much, but we did have a lovely walk.

I must warn you and I have been experimenting with picture effects on the website Picnik.com. If these pics look a little too Maxfield Parrishesh, it’s just because I got a little excited about the “VIBRANT!” effect.

50 feet into our walk, this happened.

This is the bestI could do. Not one of them is even looking in the general direction of the camera.

The mighty mighty river.

The mighty mighty boardwalk.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring?

Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats- eternal optimist. We would probably not have gotten along. At least, not today.