This year brought a quieter, gentler start to the fall. A roaring fire to see us through breakfast, and a big thunder and rainstorm. Then a quiet morning reading and drawing and watching the leaves flutter down to the sidewalk in front of our house, as the skies cleared and the honking geese bade their goodbyes on the wind, en route to warmer shores. Jacob playing Gordon Lightfoot songs on his guitar but not singing the words today as he rests his voice, as he tries to decide how sick he might be. My throat was on fire this morning, daggers all the way down with each swallow and I can't wait to get better.
The toothbrush-holder cup has been replaced with four travel cases and each brush now has it's own sterile spot and there are four cups along the counter for each of us to have our own. We have a cupboard full of homeopathic remedies, tinctures and capsules to offset the regimented prescriptions and newfangled medicine and between all of that we'll beat this illness sometime during the week to come, if we are lucky. The doctor told us to remember to wash our hands even more, now that the cold weather has come and I reminded him of last year when my fingertips cracked and bled every day and I couldn't hold them together and I would bandage them up and just keep typing and he asked if I wanted to be sick like this or just use some extra moisturizer.
Inside my head I politely told him where he could stuff the moisturizer.
It's now around 30 degrees and heavy in the skies and so I'm guessing the rain is going to make it's return so I closed the windows in the bedrooms but left the others open for now. Soon the temperature will drop and Jacob will light the fire he laid just now and we'll curl up again together once the kids are in bed and talk about nothing, just read with our heads touching again, Jacob with his copy of Kerouac's Good Blonde and Others and me with a whole stack of helpful books from Joel's library on learning how to live with myself that I will ignore in favor of starting a new embroidery project. Ruth has two pairs of jeans she'd like personalized and I wanted to do the pillows upstairs so that they match, they're all different shades of green so if I use a cream thread and embroider the same design on each one, I think it'll look very nice.
However, based on the way today has gone so far, I imagine I'll wind up resting my head on Jacob's shoulder and falling asleep like I did last night (missing the last fifteen crucial minutes of The Departed) and doing absolutely nothing at all.
