What the hell happened to Fall?

I mean, yeah, the leaves turned and fell and it was all oooh, aaah pretty and all that, but come on. Halloween was like 70 freaking degrees and a little more than a week later it’s snowing. What’s that all about?

It means one thing, for sure, that I probably missed my best chance to rake leaves. I hate raking leaves. One of the big reasons why, when I was younger, before I was a parent, that I never wanted to own a house. Cleaning gutters sucks too, something else that needs to be done. Plus, we got this skunk that likes to scent around our house and man it just creep inside and take days and burning multiple candles down to nothing to get rid of it.

Also, I missed my chance yet again, to plant tulip bulbs. Screw the pooch on that one again.

But there is one cool thing about the snow. Last night I was watching it fall through our front picture window. We have a street lamp on our corners and the snow coming down through that cone of light makes a nice image. Reminds of when my daughter was younger. I got up in the middle of the night and looked in on her and found her bed empty. Of course, I freaked more than a little. She was only about 3 and if she did get out of bed she’d come straight to our room. I hurried down the hallway to the living room and found her lying on the couch. She’d climbed up and was snuggled under her Dora blanky, looking out the window. It was snowing. When I asked he what she was doing, she just turned to me and said, “Daddy. I’m looking at the light.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see that.” Then I lay down on the couch with her and we watched the light and snow together, eventually falling asleep.

One of the best moments I’ve ever had with my daughter, who is not almost 8 and growing up way too fast.

We know it’s fall because…

…of course the leaves are changing color, and falling to the the ground. Hell, we got one house on our block with the entire front lawn already covered with leaves. Yikes! And there is a certain crispness in the air, especially in the mornings. And the kids are back to school. Addy’s doing second grade and she loves her teacher, who used to be an Opera singer and speaks several languages, which is probably why Addy has a little girl from Germany in her class, plus another little girl who is Russian.

Anyhoo…one of the other tell tale signs that fall is here, although perhaps not officially, is Addy had her first soccer game today. She’s on a new team this year. Only two girls from her team last year are on the team this year, and at first she was a little nervous about that, but the new girls were so friendly, coming right up to her to introduce themselves, the first day of practice that there was no problem. And of course, a new team means a new coach, but she likes the coach too. So we’re all good. The game went well, despite the early time, 9am, and the rain. It wasn’t a downpour but it was steady. But the girls didn’t seem to mind much. Addy never complained, and really couldn’t get out on the field enough. Although she is still a bit of a daydreamer at time. And even though at this age score is not a big issue, it was a freaking route, our team winning by a score or something like 8-2. Woo hoo!

But back to the rain if I may. Turned out we were lucky to have such an early game. The rain picked up later this morning. And it is still raining now. I read that because of Hurricane Ike we will be getting a lot of rain this weekend.