October 1

This morning, I went to fill up my usual cup of work coffee (distinguishable from home coffee because I don’t make it, it is made with Folgers, and it is one of the only times I use the powdered non-dairy creamer). Poured the coffee, and flipped up the little metal latch for the nondairy creamer and shook over my coffee. I do this every morning.

Well.

I guess there are limits, even with nondairy creamer. No biggie. I 'll just get some more out of the cabinet.

All gone!

And it is raining outside. Or I’d go to the grocery store for more out of my own pocket, I swear.

Or better yet, if I am going to brave the rain, I should just go to the coffeeshop for real coffee, a double cappucino, or a large mocha.

But I am not going to brave the rain. Yet. This morning I walked the dog in the rain. That was fun enough.

We are all sitting here in the rain, in our Friday jeans, waiting for federal guidelines to be released. Until then, we are in a holding pattern. Waiting for Godot. Compared to the gray skies outside our windows, the flourescent lighting seems very bright inside. Almost cheery, almost warm.

The tree outside my window has started to change, and now has nearly as many yellow leaves as green.

This afternoon was supposed to be our Homecoming Parade. Well. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I won’t be standing out in the rain to see it. And soccer tomorrow? And the Scottish Highland Games? Dinner in the Sukkot? Not if it is raining.

One of my secret fantasies for this weekend is that it will continue raining into the morrow and so our packed weekend, soccer at 9 a.m., soccer at 10 a.m., the Scottish Highland Games, The Red Barn Arts Festival—everything that requires sustained time outdoors—will give way to coffeetime on the couch in jammies and slippers, NPR, lingering breakfast…

Granted, it’s my choice. I don’t have to do anything tomorrow if I don’t want to. But if it is not raining, then I do want to go do and all of those things, and I will wait for a tucked in Sunday morning instead.

Last night, we stayed in. Ahhhh… Tomorrow, busy busy busy. Tonight, Dereck may go out and hear some Celtic music, but I have steadfastly refused to get a sitter this week or weekend. My body, mind, and soul are telling me that I need more quiet, less activity, more sleep, more just time that is unassigned, time in my house, restorative time. I spent an inordinately long time last night looking at down comforters and sateen sheets on various websites, trying to figure out which kind of down comforter I want (Angela, you have inspired all of this, what kind do you have?), what kind of sheets. I want extravagance. I am using the jersey knit sheets on my bed readily available at Walmart. I have quilts on my bed that my grandmother and her sisters tied for me for my wedding, 13 years ago. The stuffing is coming out of them, they are torn, they are old.

I want to vacuum out my room, flip the mattress, and put on 500 count sateen sheets, matching pillow cases, my down cover with it’s sueded duvet cover. Of course, I do not have any of these things, and as I look at prices, I wonder, do we really need goose down? And maybe the 250 count sheets would be so much better than Walmart jersey knit that I wouldn’t even know what I was missing—and I don’t know that I have ever experienced 500 thread count sheets, so I truly wouldn’t know what I was missing…

And even though I am looking, I am not buying. Not yet. I am prolonging the enjoyment with the delicious anticipation and daydreaming and fantasy. I want these for the holidays, I want these for winter nights when it starts getting dark at 4:30 p.m. and we don’t even want to go outside in the evenings anymore. I want them to be fresh and new so long, that I don’t even want to have them yet—in my mind’s eye they are fresh and soft and new and clean and I am sinking into them.

I am feeling so generous, I even want a down comforter for Sam’s bed, want him to have that experience. Christian and Tommy can wait—but Sam is standing on the edge of age 11, which was for me such a significant age in my childhood. It is the age at which I really started to wake up and become a person, not only a child, a time at which I began to make connections I hadn’t made before. And he will be 11 next month.

Next weekend, I’m going to Orlando, if there is anything in Florida left.

The next weekend, no plans so far. Don wants to have poker night, but I have my kids, they start poker at 6:30—can’t do it.

The next weekend, Omaha for a conference with Dereck. Then, the middle of that week, Bob Dylan in Columbia.

Halloween.

Time seems to be rushing toward me like a train speeding through the dark. I can hear it long before I see it coming.