Today: woke from vivid, emotional dreams to a morning that promised a beautiful Friday. And indeed, by 11 a.m. it was apparent that this year's first full-blown Indian summer day had rolled in.
Recent nights in these parts have felt as if we were sliding deeper into the time when autumn begins giving way to early winter, climaxing Tuesday night, the thermometer outside the dining room window showing 19 degrees when I dragged myself out of bed Wed. morning. The world outside lay draped in frost thick enough that it looked like snow had fallen. So that this change feels a bit like we're cheating the season, turning away winter's steady approach with spectacular June-like conditions, the grass and bushes alive with singing insects, small yellow late-season butterflies everywhere. The kind of day tailormade for lounging about, the day a sane, normal person might have taken advantage of to play hooky, get their own private three-day weekend underway.
I, however, found myself seized by an inexplicable urge to get productive. Laundry, straightening up parts of the house in dire need of straightening up, blah blah blah. And installing another door -- pulling out the ugly-ass hollow-core bugger in the bedroom across the hall from mine, replacing it with one of the fine pine numbers I picked up during the summer. An operation I've done enough times now that I apparently felt I could do it in my sleep. Or, in this case, a blissful Indian-summer induced half-stupor.
The work got done down the hall from the bedroom, windows open all around, warm air flowing through. I'd cranked up the stereo, tossed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever To Tell into the CD player -- a killer disk, so excellent that I found myself drifting off into the squalling, high-volume tunes as I worked, mental activity quieting as hands worked steadily away. Until I began setting holes for the hinge screws and realized I'd sunk the chisel slots on the wrong side of the door. Bwaaaahahaha!
Shut the music off. Turned the door around, did the work right. Installed door, called it a day.
A strange aspect of Indian summer in these parts: the annual ladybug invasion. Autumn arrives, the days shorten up, the weather develops some bite. At some point, cold gives way to an October warm spell, flushing ladybugs out from wherever they've been hiding, in an instinctive seach for somewhere warm to pass the winter months. Which means on a day like today they're all over the outside of the house, investigating seams around window frames, cracks around doorways. If I have an inside door open, as the kitchen door has been, they find their way in around the storm door. By late afternoon, indoor ceiling, windows and walls are speckled with tiny, round orange dots.
The days roll along, each one turning the wheel of the seasons just a little bit.
Meanwhile, local Halloween silliness is well underway. Maple Corner -- Calais, VT:
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Bumpersticker seen in Montpelier earlier today:
I'D RATHER BE HUNTING AND GATHERING
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 7:00 PM [+]
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