Chilly Nights.

It's turned cold. Except that's not true: it's turned cool, and it was so hot for so long that it seems cold. The evening dogwalk with the Toad meant a hat for him, a hat for me. The house is cold. Or cool. It's 67 in here. It was 64 this morning, upstairs and down. It's only two or three degrees warmer than we keep it in January. I will not turn the heat on. I will not turn the heat on. I will not turn the heat on. (But I will happily use the woodstove in the writing shed.) We landed in the forties overnight. We're in the forties now. TWC wants us right at 40 for the overnight low tonight. Which means somebody's bound to see 39. Thirty-nine. Say it with me, friends and fans of weather, or say it at your convenience. Doesn't matter. We have shifted, have tilted past the edge, have sailed, finally, past that point beyond which there be dragons. I have inventoried the flannel. I have found the hats. It is fall.

Someone in the neighborhood pulled our emptied trash cans off the street and put them back in the driveway where they belong. When I was a teenager and slept past one on Sundays, my dad would mow the lawn to prove a point. Didn't work then, won't work now. Though dear sweet baby Jesus firing up an old green Lawn Boy do I remember the sound of my having lost the battle, the smell of me figuring out if I could still win the war.

I wrote this morning. I wrote yesterday morning. Shocking what that will do for making one feel like one writes.