I find myself in a strange melancholy this last day of September. In this Year of the Fake Plague with lockdowns and mask rules extended for “just 30 more days” every 30 days, there has been a festive feel to the end of every month since March. There was always the hope that the next month will take us a little closer to normal.
Not this time. I already notice the warmth and light slipping away, and I miss it already. I can’t look forward to my birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas as much as I dread the frigid, joyless hell of January and February afterward. It’s wearying to think of going through another winter.
I recognize this as an attitude problem and it will be dealt with. I’ve mentioned before how my favorite season was autumn until I matured and came to appreciate the dying-and-death angle on a personal level. The trick as I enter the November, perhaps even the December of my years this October, is to learn to love every day in every month in every year for what it is. No more playing favorites. If you’re here for it, it’s good. I managed to do that with the time of day. I can do it with the year.
Meanwhile, it’s been a pivotal September, one like none other we leave behind. It began in oppressive heat and wildfire smoke blown in from Utah and California. My wife and I finally managed to get all the junked appliances and broken furniture out of our garage to the dump. This was a project years in the procrastinating.
We got it out just before the temperatures dropped and the wind picked up and we got over a foot of heavy wet snow on the 8th. Of September. I was grateful the roofs didn’t fall in under all the weight. That our power stayed on was another miracle. A lot of trees took heavy damage, though.
The temperatures recovered towards normal fall numbers, and that was how we ended Summer 2020. It was so good to see blue skies again. In another week we took a van load of yard waste, including a sectioned aspen tree I’d cut down earlier in the year that was threating the powerline going to our house.
Aside from clearing our garage and yard of so much refuse, we found boxes in the garage that most certainly did not belong there, given the fine white San Luis Valley dust that blows over everything. The boxes full of patterned fabrics, our children’s drawings and toys, were duly cleaned off and re-organized indoors.
Getting the garage organized was an enormous step forward for us. There were other items of interest, too, but perhaps the biggest news was today, when we took a stray kitten off an elderly couple’s hands. On one hand, it’s foolishness to take in a puppy or kitten while pushing 60—who will take care of them if my number is called?—and on the other, I can’t resist a rescue. We lost Otis T. Cat on 3 March. Today, 30 September, Pip came into our lives. Photos pending.
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