Oh Sandy.

Calling it a Frankenstorm's no good, except for the obvious opportunity to say It's alive, it's alive. But it smacks of a failure of imagination, or ownership. Of a We didn't make that. And maybe we didn't. Maybe snowriccanes happened all the time before 1975, and I just wasn't here to see the pre-landfall cable wall-to-wall. Still. Something about it seems to edge, at least, against the broken. Surely this isn't the main idea. Surely of the possible solutions, this one's an outlier. This tugs the bell curve one way or the other. More perfect than The Perfect Storm, I read or heard somewhere. Someplace on one of the internets. A brand new way to have our own names fail us.

All this wind's hurrying our own local fall towards an emptier, grayer November, all the leaves down at once, the yellowed maples pushed and rushed through a week of eighty-degree days followed by this. Piles of leaves in the backyard. The Toad in the piles of leaves. The Toad recollecting his age, two and change, and putting the exclamation point on what had been a quiet weekend with an epic meltdown during a Sunday noon picnic lunch in them selfsame piles of leaves. Now a nap. Mercifully. A nap.

Cold, cold weather coming. Rain and low sky, wind and frost. It's time. I'm ready. I've been ready since I let the forecast start predicting itself back in July and August. I don't do so hot with the heat. It's not my bag. This, boys and girls, cool cats of all ages, is, aside from the apocalyptic portions, more my speed.