fallish goings-on

The weather around here where I live has been remarkable for the last few days. The nights are so clear that I can see the Milky Way, with each star a perfect pinprick. It's cold enough to breathe smoke and my fingers and toes get chilly. During the day it warms up but I can still wear my favorite Big Dog fleece jacket and be comfortable. I love everything about this time of year from the colors to the holidays to the smell of fires to school rolling into full swing. It's here. I've been waiting for this feeling to come back, and despite turmoil and upset and general busy-ness, it has arrived, as it always has. No worries.

This morning I was sitting in my home office preparing for my YRUU class, and was only momentarily distracted by the rain on the roof. Eventually, though, I became aware enough to realize it was another beautiful day with brilliant blue skies, and the sound of rain just didn't quite fit. I figured it was the heater kicking on...but those vents are in the floor and not the roof. So I shrugged and let it remain a puzzle.

Later, I decided to take Roxy out for her morning elimination ritual. I choose the word ritual very deliberately. This dog is beyond weird. Peeing is not a problem. She can do that at the drop of a hat (which has been part of the whole problem with housebreaking...she can jump to retrieve a thrown toy, drop and pee and run off before you can blink twice). Pooping, however, requires a much more elaborate structure. We must (1) be at the exact correct location, which she has chosen to be at the very base of the slide on my children's swing set. (Look, I don't make these rules, I just follow them). Next, (2) she must be able to perform an elaborate set of such back-leg-kickings and jumps and sniffs as you've never seen before. This includes her kicking dirt up onto the slide which inevitably scares her (I'm thinking she inherited the lab intellect rather than that of the border collie at this point. I'm just sayin'.). This usually results a direct violation of condition number (3) which is that she requires complete and utter concentration. Any distraction at all, which includes the sound of dirt she has kicked up herself as it thunderously hits a plastic slide, takes her attention and requires that she start the entire process over again.

So we set out outdoors in the gorgeous fall morning for the quick drop and pee and headed over to the swingset for the leg-kicking, jumping, strange gyration, pooping routine. But it was not to be. The rain that I had been confused about earlier was revealed to be acorns. A very large flock of very black birds had settled into two trees just beside the house. I'm also guessing this was a group therapy session for birds with ADHD. I was getting stressed just watching them. They would sit for approximately 0.4 seconds before flying to another branch to sit 0.4 seconds and repeat. All 2000 of them. After 5 minutes or so, I realized Roxy and I had both been standing there transfixed with mouths agape, watching the rainstorm of acorns. Once they started hitting within several inches of Roxy and myself, I worried there may be the occasional non-acorn dropping, so I decided it was time to get her to do her business and get back inside. Uh - No. Condition number 3 was the issue of the morning and was clearly not going to be met so long as the blackbird ADHD convention was going on. So being the mighty human that I am, I picked up a stick and threw it up into the trees with an enormous battle cry. Which had exactly no effect at all on the birds but did make Roxy glance up at me and roll her eyes.

I was finally able to break up the meeting by slamming my shoe against the slide, but that was in such violation of rule number 3 that I gave up and went back inside.

But these are the sorts of things about fall that keep me going. Truly. What a cool world this is - with roaming packs of birds that can make acorn rain, with cold air that makes my toes tingle, with leaves that crunch as Roxy and I wander the yard. These seasons - this rhythm that covers life and death in an endless circle - this is my spiritual core.