in which she pops her head up to say hello...

November. WTF?

At the beginning of every autumn, I tell myself that this is the year I am going to go slow and revel in the change of seasons and enjoy every second of the cooling temps, the fires in the fireplace, the start of a new school year. I'm going to go slow enough to track the incremental changes in leaf color on the trees in my years and I'm going to feel the aura of autumn in every cell of my body. And about this time every autumn, I realize that I've been enjoying it so much that it has flown by unnoticed. I guess that's the point, ultimately, isn't it?

Soccer and baseball for the kids are over now, so my "free time" allotment has just exploded for the next couple of months (until it all starts up again). But really - I complain in jest. I never did sports as a kid and I do wish I'd had the opportunity. The opportunities were simply not THERE for a little girl back in the 70s. I love that E has no idea that there could possibly be any limits there for her because of her gender. It simply doesn't factor into her thought process. She plays soccer for the enjoyment and for the social benefit (very honestly, she has no real love of the game and has inherited my limited athletic prowess, but she embraces her "right" to play simply because she has fun). I LOVE that Q has found a sport that marries athletic ability and intellect. He is a perfect candidate for baseball. I love watching him play and love having him analyze the game for us afterwards.

So what I have had time to focus upon this fall from a personal perspective is food. FOOD!!!!! Food fascinates me. I love simple, plain food - the smell of earth, the warmth, the freshness that I smell on new greens, on onions, on potatoes. I stuck my head down into my CSA basket the other day to just breathe. In retrospect, I'm fairly lucky no one walked in on me. My counter is covered with butternut squash, garlic, honeycrisp apples, and something like 30 sweet potatoes. While I turn into psycho-yelling mom when my counter collects papers and junk mail, seeing all the food spilling over onto every quarter of the counter makes me happy. I'm sure my family will learn these fine distinctions in no time.

I've become quite the convert into eating locally and seasonally and organically, and so far, my family hasn't complained too awfully much. In fact, being the evil mom that I am, I forced my kids to sit through a showing of "Food, Inc." Despite the eye rolls and whining, E has since become a vegetarian, and has stuck to that quite strictly for about a month now. The rest of us have no problem eating meat as long as it's from an animal that resembled what it is naturally supposed to resemble while alive. It's been some work to find sources of healthy foods for the various aspects of our lives (school lunches, quick snacks, etc) but we're making excellent progress. I have a new 9 cubic foot freezer chugging away in the garage filled with fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce, and fruits, and waiting for our first delivery of meat from PolyFace Farm tomorrow. I have a lot of thoughts on my transition into crazy granola mom and why it's really not very crazy or granola. It's actually quite spiritual to me. My spiritual focus is on the way the universe fits together so beautifully, and the transition of solar energy into food into us is ultimately something important. I think the US has been brain-washed by the media into ignoring that natural cycle, or at least brain-washed into believing that the industrial version of that cycle (which is pretty whacked out) is the natural one. Craziness.

In the meantime, it's time to revel in November. October may have slipped through my fingers, but so far November is actually looking more like fall and I'm happy with that.