Weekend Awesomeness, Recapped

Somehow...and I'm not entirely sure how this happened...the end of the year has sneaked up upon me. Summer, which seems to go on as eternally as hellfire here in the desert, has officially fucked the fuck off for another few months. The days can still get warm, but not uncomfortable, and the nights and mornings have been downright cool.

If I were completely honest, I'd say that this has been the most lovely October and autumn out here in the desert since I moved here six years ago.

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The last few days have been a whirlwind, filled with an abundance of happy circumstances and things, all of which have given me extraordinary pleasure:

• We actually had a wee bit of WEATHER this weekend, with grumpy, deep lavender-grey clouds fighting with the sun in the desert sky. I love the extra-stormy feel of those contrasting natural elements, don't you?
• An absolutely kick-ass concert on Saturday night--along with my superhero girls, NavaJo and MILF, I attended the Def Leppard concert at the casino. It was a high-energy, fun, sold-out event, and one of the best nights of my life.
  
• Daylight savings time! I CANNOT, SIMPLY CANNOT be the only person that loves "falling back," can I? I mean, we gain a whole hour's sleep, AND it gets dark earlier! I love the dark, and the winter months, and oh, how I miss how it would be pitch-black by 5 PM, back in Southern Indiana. Sigh. 
• My Erin Condren planner has shipped! I intend to stalk the tracking number on this every day until this bundle of life-planning awesomeness is in my hands and I can have this physical representation of all the planned awesomeness of the year ahead. 
• Lots of other wonderful things: seeing the Christmas decor come up in Michaels and Target; purchasing a lovely haul of cosmetics from Ulta and Sephora; greasy hangover food and a Hair of the Dog (which does, surprisingly, do the trick), and just lazing around in bed on a Saturday morning with YouTube...all of these, just damned lovely ways to make life grand.

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So I Guess You Call This Autumn...

Right now, it’s 66 degrees in Salem, Massachusetts.

69 in Buffalo, New York.

78 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

65 in Falls  Church, Virginia.

In all of these cities, the late days of summer are gradually lessening their grip. The heat is still perhaps punishing, the air stale, but people can breathe a sigh of relief—the end of summer is in sight. And with their backpacks and their pencil boxes and vague feelings of apprehension, children are returning to school.

Labor Day is just around the corner—and once that passes, people across the country will be making the transition to fall, with the attendant autumnal colors, cooler weather, references to Halloween, hot  beverages, ghost stories, snuggly blankets, and the like.

Here in the deserts of Southern California, it’s not fall, not even close. In fact, the monsoonal humidity makes the 105 degree temps almost—but only almost—worse than the dry 115 degree temps. And yet, summer is passing—soon we’ll be in one of the liminal seasons that I feel like are a hallmark of California. The air will be hot, the skies will be sunny and cloudless, and without a calendar handy, without the 115 degree summer temps or the flash-flooding winter storms, one would be hard-pressed to tell what season it is.

It’s not fall, not by a long shot, not like I knew it in Indiana, but it’s close enough for me to pretend. When the heat abates from 115 degrees, down to a cool 97 degrees at a quarter til 8 in the evening, that’s enough for me to sit outside and watch the last pink rays reach from the Western skies, and listen to the cicadas (an odd and familiar consolation, they are—noisy little fuckers have been everywhere I have lived) mourn the inevitable passing of the summer, and make promises to myself. I’ll start wearing makeup again. I’ll cook. I’ll move back into the craft room. I’ll organize the closet. All things that it’s simply too hot to do now. I’ll read some ghost stories. I’ll put up the fall decorations.

It’s NOT fall. But it’s enough.

At least for now.