Day #254: Fall

 Fall is not my fave. 

I think people who really adore fall are people who live in the crisp, dry days part of the world. Here in the great PNW, fall can be quite...soggy. We do have a fair amount of deciduous trees and the foliage can be quite lovely...I've always wanted to travel to a place that had the real deciduous forests and get the full blast of the fall foliage, but for us it's some lovely pops of color backdropped by green, which is kind of nice because when the leaves do fall it doesn't all go...dead.

But it can be wet. My husband, a transplanted Midwesterner, always says our rain is really annoying because it isn't "real" rain. It's just this misty dampness. That doesn't end. There's this joke that Seattleites never carry an umbrella...well, I'll tell you as someone who commuted by bus for four years and had to walk through downtown to transfer buses, a lot of us find an umbrella handy for those tough days. But with most of our rain umbrellas don't help much because it doesn't rain *hard* so rain is just all around you and goes right under that sucker. A hood is much more effective.

I also don't like being cold. I don't like the switch to cold. Our cold here isn't cold in the degrees it is outside, it is cold like clammy. The first thing I did when it started to feel like fall is buy a lot of warm socks.

It's also dark. After daylight savings time, the sun generally goes down around 4, so we have about eight hours of daylight, most of it behind dark storm clouds. It's not the happiest time of year to be here. And this year, well, I've been DREADING IT.

We had, it should be noted, the nicest spring weather I've seen in a long time. March...when we were all locked down and couldn't do anything but go for a walk...was really pretty. March can be our nastiest weather month and it really wasn't. And then summer...well, summer had plenty of hard spots but the nice thing was you could always go outside. And honestly, nothing beats summer in Washington. Not super hot, not muggy, plenty of trees. A walk in the woods, a trip to the beach, this is how we got through. And my goal was to take summer straight into September. 

But I have been dreading this time of year in the time of COVID. Seasonal depression is REAL...and when you can't plan a trip or have a playdate or go to the pool or sit in a coffeeshop or any of the myraid of coping strategies I normally use...yeah. It's hard.

Today was one of those fall days where the sun comes out and it's something of a miracle. It has been windstormy in the area...not so much here but to the north and west of it and we had it last night. Windstorms also a norm for this time of year. But this afternoon the rain stopped and the clouds cleared and the sky was blue and the afternoon Zoom class didn't work, so I took my kids to a park they really like...it's just a big open field with a line of trees and rhodedendron bushes around the edges. They like to walk the perimeter, climb in/on the trees, and then run on the grass...and all of that is far away from the playground, which is nice as we are really trying to limit playgrounds. This is also a park that didn't close, so even in the thick of it in April we could walk around in there and the flowers were in bloom.

So I watched James climb a tree and Max stand and watch him and climb on and off tree roots and we weren't really in a forest but just in this little band of trees with a carpet of leaves under us that made everything seem extra quiet. And no one was there and it was just us and I thought...oh. This is why people love the fall. 

There has been a lot of crappy stuff that has happened this year. But one of the little tiny good things that has come along with it all is I appreciate little things more now. I listen to birds more. When I get to see friends I am more grateful. I can't go to the pool so the feel of a warm shower is amazing. And I get to feel the change in seasons. With so much to grouse about right now, it seemed dumb to add fall to that list.

Tomorrow I get to do another favorite fall activity...tomorrow is baking day! What was supposed to be our fall lady friends cookie decorating day has been moved to Zoom so I'm making at least 2 maybe 3 different kinds of cookies plus ice cream from the recipe in that book I read a couple of weeks ago. It should be lovely.

Media consumption: lots of How I Met Your Mother...the darkness makes it hard to get out of bed so I've been taking my time and watching some TV in the mornings #worldsokayestmom. I am so close to done with that book group book The Chronology of Water. That meeting is tomorrow. Ugh. I'm super over that book. I'm hoping to finish it tonight and have some time to read more of Show Me a Sign, which I read just a tiny bit of last night and got to Part 2 so it just got super interesting.

Today I'm grateful for fresh air, the change of seasons, libraries and librarians, uninterrupted time to write, lots of kiddo hugs, and cozy socks.