Right now it’s hot and bright in downtown Oakland. But at 7:45am things were perfectly autumnal; the tops of the office buildings melted into fog, and it was nippy enough that I wished I worn tights instead of just knee-highs. A week or two ago I started seeing coots bobbing around on the lake, and realized it wasn’t summer any more and I needed to drag my brain out of July and into the present. The past couple months have passed by at such exhausting gallop that I find myself still daydreaming about beach trips and tomatoes and peach tart when it’s time to be thinking about soup and apple pie.
Lately I’ve been sleeping uneasily and dreaming strange dreams that, according to the Yankee Fan, make me tremble and whimper in my sleep. I think my little coot noggin is so overloaded with ideas and worries it can’t sit still. I wish I could get by on 4 hours sleep. I wish I had the willpower to stick to my stacks of to-do lists. I wish I had the willpower to cancel my Netflix subscription and thus eliminate the temptation to watch 80 consecutive X-Files episodes instead to sticking to my to-do lists. Maybe I just need the willpower to not make a to-do list every time I see a scrap of paper.
Glad to see you blogging again.
Maybe you’ll inspire me to do the same.
I know what you mean! It’s hard to let go of the peaches. I’ve switched to plums as my stone fruit surrogate, but soon they’ll be gone too and it will be apples and citrus or death.
So it seems like fall is reminding us: live in the moment! That ice cube wind is the alarm clock. It’s telling the coot brain to chill out on the future with all its to-do’s and refocus on the crumble of leaves under Alan Alda.
Saw coots at Lake Anza and of course thought of you. They’re saying, “Coot! Coot! Don’t stress, Bess!”