Fall-l-l-ing

Fall has arrived. This year the acorns are enormous and picture-perfect. No, Martha Stewart perfect! I would enjoy admiring a bowl full of them on my dining room table. It's easier than attempting to fit the entire oak tree in my home. Much like the turning leaves in hues of browns and reds and all manner of earthy shades in between, acorns for me signal the changing of the guard. I've been their biggest secret fan since I first laid eyes on them in Seattle, Washington as a small girl. The tree-lined streets in older neighborhoods offered a visual feast of the squirrel snacks in clusters along the branches and in dizzying array at the foot of their parents. They stir my desires to wear long-sleeves and jeans; to sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg atop the foam on my chai lattes; to place lovely pumpkins of all proportions on my porch and patio; to light a blaze in our outdoor fireplace and watch the flames with my family; and . . . to handle the damp and malodorous football clothes in my son's gym bag after football practice.

Sc-r-r-r-r-a-a-t-ch-ch-h-h the needle on the record! Hold up a red hot minute! Why are his rank jerseys and socks making their way into my personal musings about the greatest season of the year? Can't anything, ANYTHING, just be about me? Must this intrude upon my inner sanctum, my woman-cave, my, sigh, blog?!

As I was saying before my olfactory senses suffered a PTSD attack due to my earlier laundering this afternoon, autumn is here. It was officially welcomed earlier this week. The TODAY show even announced it to their entire viewing audience in between world news updates and make-overs with Kathie Lee and Hoda. I must confess to a warm tingle which suffused my entire body with the innocent pleasure that only crisp cool air and the scent of homemade baked apple anything could inspire. Speaking of inspiration, there is a poetic appropriateness to the changes which take place as summer surrenders her last breath to possession by autumnal airs. The same air upon which hordes of blackbirds and gaggles of Canada geese take flight en route to their winter addresses. A winter address? I have a winter address and it is identical to my spring, summer and fall address. I wouldn't mind winging it to hang out for a few months with my avian friends in other parts. Maybe I could set up a temporary P.O. box. Then, I wouldn't concern myself overly much with the first report cards of the school year, wondering why that 'A' looks suspiciously like an 'F' with a slight alteration on its right side. There would be no fund-raising e-mails from the baseball booster club or magazines to sell for the middle school to neighbors up to their eyeballs with unread issues from last year's orders!

Stop! Halt! Cease and desist! Or, should I say cease to persist?! For the love of all things seasonably mild, THIS again? Is it absolutely necessary to drag outsiders into this otherwise charming rendition of Gloria of Sunnybrook Farm? For just the littlest of whiles, can't I be Heidi of the hills, living with her grandfather and his goats, at one with nature and peace and simple happiness?

So, like I mentioned before intruders stormed the gates of my hideaway fortress and forced me to bare arms, er, bear arms, that interim period between the extremes of heat and cold has gained entrance into our weather once again. The next few months are ripe for harvest moons and corn mazes - not to be corn-fused with maize. Hearty sojourners will point their cars to higher altitudes and gaze upon the new deciduous foliage wardrobes before their wearers go naked for winter. Hot steaming cider will give new life to old mugs previously hidden behind sweet-tea glasses. Brothy soups brimming with chicken and vegetables and thick stews replete with chunks of beef and potatoes will find their way to the dinner table. Rakes will replace shovels and weed-whackers. Scarecrow men will adorn front lawns, and garden patches with just-about-ready jack-o-lantern candidates will entice excited children to bring them home. Halloween, with its orange and black motif, and trick-or-treaters with gobs of mini-chocolate bars I'd like to heist, will offer the backdrop for the 20th birthday party for my first child. Yes, I'm whipping up an intense three-layer pistachio cake in green and black with a rich chocolate ganache frosting. We'll fork over the cash for her and then turn right around and do it all over again the following weekend for my middle child. As brilliant as we were in spacing them three years apart, where's the genius in birthdays separated by a mere week ?!

Huh? Excuse me, but I'm doing WHAT again? Wandering away from the theme? Rambling off the beaten path? Digressing from the main? Ohhh, I give up. They win. They are my theme. Fall is only the briefest of sidebar plots in the big story. Perhaps I'll try again in the winter. Everyone will be in the froze, with blue lips and mock- turtlenecks and Ugg boots, hoping for egg nog and gaily wrapped packages. Maybe they will be too distracted to butt in to my mental meanderings. But, until then, somebody please pass the candy corn.