Gray Morning.

This was not the forecast, but we know by now that the fancies are as often as not sticking their hands down in the big bag of weather icons and slapping up on the board whatever they pick out first. A big blue H and a sun with a little fluffy cloud down where its skirt ought to go? Super. We've probably still got the big blue H somewhere nearby — don't get me wrong — but I'm guessing it's a little less nearby than the big board had it last night, and I'm guessing this is some kind of low-level low-energy something that slid in underneath our big blue H, and even though it looks like it's already starting to burn off some, it's lovely in its own way, and I say pour another cup of coffee and tug on an old shirt and sit on the porch and enjoy it. The dog will have none of that, of course: She's gone back to bed.

Comes next the glinty sun and the seventy-four degrees and the fall breeze and the windows-down drive to 27244, and even though the drive to 27244 means going to 27244, perhaps the windows down will mitigate some of that, and I can summon something up from within me to cancel out all the whiny complaining about my job I've been subjecting the inside of my head and the inside of my house to for the better part of two weeks. I am not loving the job part of my job right now. I am loving the coming-home-from-my-job part of my job right now. I have had to say one too many times this term that the breakup endured when you were fifteen, Meghan, is probably not a suitable subject for your art. And not to be pissy about it, but it's probably not even a suitable subject for the deadly serious late-evening convos over at the Phi Whatever house right upon the conclusion of an All New Very Special Gossip Girls. Oh, and Brian? No, I don't think you should revise that poem about Brett Favre.

This of course will be the weather report that one of my darlings over at J. Crew U accidentally stumbles on while googling "dog poetry weather flannel whiskey Meghan," so let me go ahead with this blanket and actually true disclaimer: I love the job anyway, even when I have to fight fights I don't want to fight. But something about real and true fall settling in makes me want to do a little less of the job — teach a little less and write a little more, walk the dog more, drink coffee more, explain one or two fewer times about why the phrase "pure as snow" isn't really acceptable under any circumstances, not even weather-related ones. I don't know what my problem is. I've got the big head, somehow think I've earned my way away from misery. I know I'll be explaining why you can't say "In the growing dark, we made decisions" until the day I die. I know that this sort of misery is not really chain gang misery, and that folks out there suffering real and true and actual misery mightn't even have the patience for this little lament. So I apologize. Maybe it's this gray morning. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm going to work now. Mark the novel. Another cup of coffee. Then it's in to 27244, in to my other job. I'll make it. Don't worry about me. Attend to your own miseries out there. When the oxygen mask descends, friends and fans of weather, make sure your own mask is secure first, and then assist the person in the seat next to you.