Tag Archives: harvestmoon

quiet end of summer days

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Maybe with the gradual approach of cooler weather and shorter days, I’ll be a more regular correspondent here.

In the meantime, I am keeping busy but not too busy and enjoying a lot of quiet time to mentally recover from a busy year. And establishing a new normal.

The weather is still warm but turning rainy and the evenings are wonderfully cool. Occasionally scented with woodsmoke. Autumn is stalking the fields.

We have several things on the calendar, including a trip to Charleston and a couple of live events (Marc Maron, Gorillaz). This weekend, on a beautiful rainy night in Detroit, we had a fantastic meal at Mad Nice and then walked with our umbrellas to Orchestra Hall for the Miles Davis and John Coltrane at 100 concert.

I’ve been to Ohio to visit Brandon in his new little apartment and we went to an amazing county fair that inspired so much nostalgia for both of us. We both grew up in the rural Midwest, he was in 4H and while I wasn’t, I still have great memories of county fairs.

His living situation is a little unique (this is consistent for him). I won’t go into details but he lives in a very historic neighborhood and has a ground floor apartment in a small house set behind the row of massive Victorian mansions that are now…funeral homes. He shares parking with a hearse. I was a little distressed at how sparse it was when I first arrived.

We had great fun thrifting to decorate his small living quarters and found some treasures. We also got him a small loveseat and ottoman and a rug, and I got him a plant, and once he has his books and art in, it has the potential to be a charming jewel box of a place.

My daughter is adjusting to her first month at college and I am so proud of her. We talk a lot and every time my phone lights up with a call from her, walking between classes, my heart lights up too. I have also loved curating little care packages for her, remembering from my own fraught transition away from home how much it can mean to get mail.

As for me, I am enjoying the few nights a week on my own. I cook if I want and don’t if I don’t want. I read books on the couch with the cats and drink lots of tea and go to bed early or late. And just when I start to feel a little isolated, Brandon is home for the weekend again.

blanket weather

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TGIF friends! I am pleased to report, in this end of week check-in, that Southeast Michigan has returned to a more normal and temperate weather system. Actually it’s been quite cool and very rainy for the past two days and I feel fortunate that we never have basement flooding issues. (Knock wood.) Emmett has decided it is blanket weather!

I have been suffering through a bit of “stranger in a strange land” feeling and am just now starting to recover. I don’t call these episodes actual “depression” because I’ve been through those and they’re not. I just feel – adrift, and as though everything that I trust and rely on suddenly feels a bit off-kilter. Being rigorous about my healthy routine, taking care of myself and others, and getting good sleep and exercise and hydration and good food, these things always help. As well as being surrounded by an amazing partner and a daughter that I could not love and adore more or be more proud of.

We have been enjoying our community’s seasonal activities. Last weekend was the Harvest Moon festival with live music and food in the pavilion, and a big harvest Farmers Market on Saturday morning. It was 80 degrees but I still drank a hot cider and we all had cinnamon donuts sitting on hay bales listening to the morning fiddle band. On Sunday, we braved the blazing sun and watched the Fall Classic at the local skateboard park. Brandon loves skateboarding and is a proud member of the local Old Bro contingent and Miss L is also a developing young shredder. The Fall Classic is sponsored by our downtown Plus Skateboard shop and it was amazing and terrifying to watch these young people risk their skulls and other bones on the concrete and coping.

I recently finished “Hour of the Witch” by Chris Bohjalian. I enjoyed the first half and then skim-read the second. I give it a solid “meh”. I also finished a graphic novel “Illuminati Ball” which had a bizarre and gappy plot but great illustrations. This week’s library trip includes the new volume of Haruki Murakami short stories – I typically do not read short stories as I find them somewhat unsatisfactory and I dislike switching gears so fast but I will make every exception for Murakami. Also a few graphic novels selected for me by Miss L including a graphic Great Gatsby.

I hope everyone has had a great week of celebrating the equinox and the full moon in Pisces (which I also sort of blame for my stranger in a strange land blip). Be well and enjoy the turning of the Wheel of the Year wherever you are.