Today

Fall is my favorite for many reasons. Not least among them: I adore the feeling of crunching leaves beneath my feet. Adore. I don't know what it is, but it comforts my obsessive compulsive bits. Crunch one under my left, have to crunch one under my right. Only it's not a HAVE to, like counting syllables or having one bite of each food left on my plate at the end, it's more like a game. Can I make the crunching feel evenly distributed between my feet? Probably not, but at least I feel tall, and powerful, as if I'm a giant crunching building after building (with no people in them of course).

Another thing I love, not completely unrelated, is the sound I make when walking on a driveway of small gravel. Not the giant rocks of a new driveway, but the small worn down pebbles of an old country road. so worn down that some of them are almost as small as the grains of dirt. If there's no one around me but Lovely, and the only thing I can hear is perhaps a breeze and the crunch crunch of the gravel, then I am so comforted. It makes me feel small and cocooned. I am safe and surrounded by happy things.

So today, when I walked Lovely and walked up the gravel driveway covered in leaves, I was in heaven. Perfectly balanced between feeling big and powerful and feeling small and safe. Perfectly balanced between the feel of the leaves and the sound of the pebbles beneath my feet. Perfectly balanced in my steps and my breathing and my emotions. For maybe just two minutes, when I walk that path, I feel like I know what it feels like to be normal, and balanced.

I hope you don't think I'm too strange for this elaborate description of such a very small thing in my day. But have i told you about that fortune cookie I got that told me "You find beauty in ordinary things. Never lose this ability."? It keeps me sane. And happy.

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Things feel sweeter to me in the fall. Halloween is upon us and I am taking the kids Trick-or-treating. And tonight we will go look for costumes right before we carve pumpkins! Hooray for the simple pleasures in life. I got a fortune cookie once that told me "you see beauty in ordinary things. never lose this ability." I took this very seriously.

Yesterday there was a woman and her grandson sitting in the car next to mine while I waited for my friend. This little boy was pretty cute. He was bored, and he wanted to talk to her, and I could not believe the words that came out of her mouth when talking to this child. "Shut up!" she told him. "You are so @#$%ing annoying. Why do you have to be that way?!" Everything he did was wrong, and I was so grateful for my family in that moment. I am so grateful for my sweet niece and nephew for being so easy to love, and I'm grateful for my momma who loved me even when i was really hard to love. And for never telling me to shut up.

The world can be such a beautiful place when you're young. People want the children in their lives to grow up so fast. Sit still, don't talk, don't play. Why not let them talk to you while they still want to? Why not let them throw rocks at the gravel? (seriously? do you think he's going to mess up the other rocks?!) Why not let them jump in rain puddles when the only place you have to go is home? Why not try to see the world through his eyes for just a little longer, and let what he sees be beautiful?

Today I am glad to be alive

This morning, my dog jumped on my bladder to let me know she was ready to get up. Ouch. The sun was warm today, and the wind slamming against my face as I drove over the mountain was crisp and cold, that almost painful chill. Today I accidentally sliced two fingers with a rotary cutter while making a quilt. Today an almost-stranger pointed out that when I'm not indulging in my "annoying" childlike habit of coloring to help me pay attention, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is "obvious." Hurts.

And I love it. The pain is what lets me know that I'm still alive. It's good. I am lucky to feel the wind on my face, and the stinging of a paper-thin cut, and the pain in my chest when someone points out my flaws. I am lucky to be alive. Thank God.

rain

I adore rainy days. Autumn is so close. With the moisture, the trees are starting to turn yellowish green, instead of brown, and the air is getting crisp! yeeeee! Lovely refuses to go outside to go to the bathroom today. She doesn't want to get her pretty little paws wet.

Also fall related: I have been yard sailing and reorganizing (which is taking for EVER) and redecorating. I love it! It's a long process, and is nowhere close to being finished, but it is the most exciting part of my life right now. YAY for yellow walls!

fall

What happened to 2010, it's almost fall already!? Don't get me wrong, I am NOT mourning the departure from the sweltering noons, for the crisp chill that is approaching. I am however, a little in shock about how much time I feel like I've lost. Charlie Love is 4 years old, and Saige is almost 10! Ten years old! He is learning to write in cursive, and today he had a little rant about how it's spelled roofs and not rooves, and journeys and not journies. He is definitely related to me. English is hard.

I'm back.

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