Loose Leaves.

The thing about Greensboro, the thing about this town that is not the thing about all the other towns I've lived in, is loose-leaf collection—and nobody'd much care about this, except that loose-leaf collection means piles of leaves along the curbs in late fall, and the dog loves really not much more than standing in a pile of leaves, which means, come November, that the dog gets primally, vestigially happy, which means I do, too, which means saddling the dog up for eleven p.m. dogwalks, which are not the norm here at 709/27401, but which, come now, come fall, come November, are the best thing, the only thing, the thing about this town.

Also: woke up bleary-eyed this morning after a night of bad and little sleep, found the coffee already made, poured a cup, let the dog out the back, and stepped out there into the bright to find the temperature at least ten degrees warmer than I expected it to be. Sat out on the step in my flannel pajama pants and dumbass company-man puppet-show hoodie and drank coffee while the dog paced the yard and thought, If it could be like this all the time, I would be OK.

To recap: piles of leaves. Coffee in the sun. If those are our bookends, then we might just pull through.