Happy October

I love October.  It might well be my favorite month of the year.

Those who know and have put up with me love me may squawk at that; February, which contains my birthday, has always held a special place in my heart.  Until recently, I celebrated My Birthday Month; Big Cuter noted its absence with dismay in the last year or two. 

In any event, I'm really loving October right now. Friends have birthdays and anniversaries but, for the most part, it's a duty-free month.  I've never heard anyone worry whether to go to his-parents-or-her-parents for Halloween....unlike Thanksgiving which is often at the center of heated deliberations.  Will Dad feel like getting on a plane?  Who has vacation time to spare and who is living the dream, 24/7, with no breaks in sight?  Who will cook and who will travel and before you know it we're giving thanks for the mere fact of the meal itself, grateful for those who are around the table at the moment.

October brings no such concerns. 

School is underway, the teachers know everyone's name, and the students are going with the flow.  Standardized tests are given, but with less anxiety than those in the spring, the ones that measure progress.  These are baseline exams, without consequences, with indications of where work must be done.  It's easing into the year, and the water feels just fine.

The clouds are high and wispy and there's no danger that they'll mass, monsoon-like, over the mountain-tops.  The dew point is well below rainy season levels, and the air has a crispness, a cleanliness, a not-overheated-but-delicious warmth to it.  Only in Tucson do people consider 85 balmy; I wondered about putting on a sweater to water the containers this evening.

Don't laugh.  It's been in the hundred-and-teens this summer... for day after day after day.... I know whereof I speak.

The pool is maintaining its warmth, but that won't last for long.  As the night-time temperatures drop from the 70's to the 50's we'll have to turn off the heater; one $700 electric bill was enough to convince us that winter swimming could be done indoors, at the gym. This afternooon, though, the breeze was lilting (what does that mean?  isn't that how you'd describe a tune?) and the sky was SIR's favorite shade, a paler Carolina blue.  I've been slacking on my exercises and my gait is showing the deterioration I've come to expect when I forget that rehab is an ongoing process where one day builds on the next and, as Billy Collins says,

then holding your breath,
place the cup on yesterday's saucer
without the slightest clink.*  

That placement only comes with constant work.  Without it, the whole pile teeters and falls.  TBG sent me to the pool this afternoon and he was absolutely right.  I didn't drown, though I was so tired I worried, just a little, that I'd forget to breathe.  I did gentle, easy laps, using my glutes and my hamstrings and my inner thighs for the first time in a long time.  They were waking up before the wedding; it's time to put them to good use.

October's a good month for that.  Christina-Taylor's path will be cool enough in the mid-morning to beckon me.  I'll mark my progress and leave her notes on the pavement with sidewalk chalk; she'll be walking beside me, I know.  October's a baseball month and C-TG was a baller; it's nice to have her around.

Mr's 7 and 9 and Miss Texas will be over on Saturday to create our scarecrows; it's part of our tradition.  Til then, I'll be opening the Halloween boxes and putting out the scaries and the pretties and the Fall.

The leaves aren't turning - 85 degrees and all - but the weekly calendar is heavily weighted toward the left side of the book.  There's a full moon outside the window tonight. I'm going to read some more poems while TBG watches the end of the football game.

I love October.
*****
* from Billy Collins's Days