So this post was written months ago and must have been tossed aside by moi because it’s awful and/or I forgot about it altogether. Either way, I liked it when I read it this morning — grammatical and spelling errors and all!
Guys. At long last fall has arrived. I wasn’t sure it would ever make it, and these recent abnormally humid days that seem unending haven’t helped. And so, I became obsessed with the weather in my anticipation for the glorious autumnal season. In between calls I could be found comparing the weather forecast to seasonal averages on various weather undergrounds and almanacs, looking for answers and hope (?), I guess. I’d scour the dusty archives of my mind, digging for mental snapshots of the same day perhaps a year or two ago, noting the outfit I had on and if I had worn a jacket or boots or, dare I say, a hat.
But with seemingly no downward trending temperatures on the horizon, I pivoted and became the Rainman of the day’s solar comings and goings. No longer interested in Doug Kammerer’s remote forecasts on NBC from his home four streets away, I had bigger fish to fry. The sun? Jesus. At one point I didn’t have to look at the weather app on my iPhone and could respond to any question about sunrise or sunset times by my own knowing. As daylight savings time drew nearer and COVID conversations grew more repetitive and depressing, apparently meteorology was my daily crutch as I waited for a big chill.
Unfortunately, it was like a slide had gotten stuck in that round projector from my freshman Art History seminar. You know the one, it’s metronomic click could be counted on to lull anyone into semiconsciousness. Click, it’s summer, click, days begin to shorten, click, click, click…Cue that scary noise that signals a prehistoric slide malfunction. I had questions. Did the slide denoting the change from summer to fall melt? Why was I hyper focused on weather? The latter is something that should be investigated further by a professional at some point, but I digress.
Perhaps the seasons, something about their inevitability, helped me tackle the challenges of the past few months. I can almost see my subconscious self, dressed in a scary outfit – half lululemon, half bitch – screaming at the gods (Al Roker, presumably, is who controls the weather globally) to get their shit together and stay on time. As one season comes to an end and another begins, there’s a burning and building that takes place. Since I spent August burning and September building, fall was supposed to arrive just in time. It’s the amplitude, the wave of change that I needed, and I was counting on its momentum to get me to 2021.
Alas, it didn’t. Also, I lived. And, finally, I didn’t need a pumpkin spiced punch in the face to smile through it all. With a little help from my weather obsession, ensuing familial trustfalls, and my book babes in DC – we got to November. Pinot Noir in the Yeti to my right. Hudson. Work to be done. Christmas decorations half-up. Plans to be made. Happiness. I won’t let go of it this time. It seems I didn’t need a wave of fallen leaves or an umber-hued festivus train to carry me to Christmas. I just needed life and the days passing by, family and food, and the evenings just me and my hoodrat friends doing hoodrat stuff – which in your thirties includes starting a book club, going for walks, watching Emily in Paris, horseback riding, and lots of facetime.
Someone recently told me my last few posts were rather sad. In retrospect, and after a very high-level skim, I kind of agree. Writing over the last six months was dark, but I figured my posts were more of a semi-rhetorical humorous/horrifying account of pandemic living. But, as we know beauty is in the eye of the beholder folks. The truth is I’m not sad. I may have been, but now I’m not sure. Relief manifests itself differently for everyone, and honestly weather’s always been a simmering passion of mine (if being glued to the tv as a teen waiting for snow day announcements counts).
Finally, I’m home. What I’m pondering these days (now that I’m not ruminating over weather patterns and tracking solar anomalies) is how to stay in this wave, this season of my life, forever. My first instinct is to protect it and that means fortify, no one in no one out. With COVID, it’s almost easier to do this as we all only see necessary friends and family, and I find myself on a blissful rotation of seeing friends daily (outside, with appropriate precautions of course).
What does this mean, though, for those of us (me) that are unattached? Even outside of the pandemic, I’m worried about it all crumbling around me – this balance I’ve created since August – should I change the people or the things that make up my happy. I guess there’s no way to forecast, predict, or control it. As the Aussie weathermen say, today is looking to be mostly fine, and I’d have to agree.
The Dog Hair Diaries 