It is the first of November, and spring is in the air.
Everything has been happening later than usual this year. We were still getting tomatoes in our farm share this week. The weather went from sweltering to frigid in a span of eye blinks. The leaves stubbornly clung to their summer shades even as they could no longer cling to their branches, rejecting their inevitable transition into fall fashion. Piles of still-green leaves lay un-raked in the yard. For awhile, it was as if autumn had just decided to phone it in this year.
Until this week. This week, the leaves finally shed their chlorophyll uniforms and suddenly the trees exploded in a blaze of red and gold, just in time for Halloween. Save for a few apathetic rain showers, the skies have been clear, the air balmy. I spent Halloween drinking overpriced beer, eating ice cream, and circumnavigating drunken droves of amusingly clad (some more amusing than others, some less clad than others) Millennials in Fells Point. I spent the day after Halloween having lunch with some dear friends, going thrifting all over the city, drinking in the April-in-November breeze, and relishing the strange but inviting arrival of fall.
What a fantastic time of year. A concert tomorrow, another in a couple weeks, a recording to make before the end of the month, plus the usual work stuff. A totally manageable, unstressful work load. (I just jinxed myself, didn't I? Just you wait...things are gonna get crazy and hectic and in a few days I'll be back here on my invisible soapbox bemoaning how I don't ever have time to make a three-course dinner anymore, while the world's smallest violin plays a sarcastic lament in the background.)
Once all that is done, it will be time for my favorite holiday ever, the holiday wherein one's sole objective is to consume an obscene amount of stick-not-only-to-your-ribs-but-to-your-thighs-and-butt-and-arteries-yeah-we're-gonna-outdo-ourselves-with-the-artery-clogging-this-year food (and be thankful for our bounty, and thank Squanto, blah blah, but let's be honest here, it's about the food) and then, like only this consumer-driven country can, immediately discard the gratitude with the pants that no longer fit and descend upon the retail outlets in a maniacal mob, still hungry, now hungry for things, it's all about things, things on sale, gotta get the things cheap so you can turn around and buy more things, and if/when you get too tired to set foot in an actual shop there's always the Internet, so you can sit splay-legged in bed, your overburdened sweat pants carving a pattern into your distended belly flesh while you hungrily purchase a [insert unnecessary-but-it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-because-it-was-on-sale-700%-off item here] and contemplate raiding the fridge for leftovers because all this hunger is making you hungry again.