god bless, fall is coming!!!!!

Oh my gosh. It feels like fall outside. I am moving August 1st. It is my annual move—I am like a Mongolian nomad. Something deep in my bones is very resistant to stillness, apparently. The fog these days reminds me of when I was a kid and summer conspicuously got on its way. Ah, I looked good in those days: moon boots and too-tight but awesome Jordache jeans and a shirt with a purple unicorn on the front that I wore every day. I knew how to live it up as a kid. I am on my way back to that. I have just thrown my Obama story over the fence to my editor. It'll be out in about a month, a little more. It's excellent. The subject matter is totally fascinating.

I have one more story and one more review on tap and then, gloria in excelsis deo, I am taking the ENTIRE FALL off from freelance writing. No triathlons, no marathons, no fundraising, no freelance work, no moving. I will have a normal life of 40-hour work weeks and of making apple cider and pluot preserves and apricot pies and molten chocolate cakes and savory tarts and herby good stews. I will go out collecting leaves and planning to press them and then not doing that and watching them curl up and then throwing them back out into the backyard with a big flurry, out to where they belonged in the first place.

I will make fires in my perfect wood-burning stove, cook foods using cardamom and cinnamon, have my family out from Jersey for a big Thanksgiving feast, and I will start right away planning my Hannukmas tree and your present and all the COOKIES I will make. I will send them to you in a box with old-timey ribbons and you will eat too many. We will all fall in love with each other, forget our Israeli-Palestinian, American-Iraqi conflicts and just toss dreidels and sing from our hymnals and eat cookies and watch every single LOST episode without once going outside.

And then we WILL go outside, run through the yard with the dogs, marvel at the luxury of free time, and maybe think about taking on another project ... or ten. I love the fall. It's my favorite!