October Notes and Scraps

It's Concert Week, which means Time, speedy little bugger that it already is, flies faster than ever. Here it is early afternoon Friday, dress rehearsal is tonight, Season 32 launches tomorrow night, post-concert reception after that, and this household is at sixes and sevens.

In short, life as usual for when you are married to the Symphony.

In all my running around today (the post office, two grocery stores, dropping off library books, getting the car back to Warren so he can use it), I managed all the same to call a time out and scrawl some notes for October on the back of the grocery list. Two hours later, as I sit here typing, I look at my notes. They read like this:

dress tonight
walking - running into Don and talking
Large inflated cat - 10 feet? makes me smile
ghosts of Halloweens past
drumming rain in early morning move closer to W
impossibly blue
Deciphered, they mean this:

dress tonight   There is dress rehearsal tonight. I will be at Gray Chapel much of the evening, helping set up the ticket and lobby areas. It will be a late night (no surprise). So will tomorrow (no surprise).

walking - running into Don and talking   Although I was driving this morning, our one-car status continues and I have been spending a lot of time on foot. I like walking, a lot, although when you have to walk, you are far more aware of the extra time it takes to walk. Have to be at the courthouse by 12:30? Build in that extra 15 minutes to get there. Walking home from the courthouse yesterday afternoon, I was deep in thought (Legal Clinic, Concert Week, bills, supper, chores) when someone called my name. It was my good friend Don, who is the director of our amazing community resource, Andrews House. He darted across the street and we talked for about 10 minutes. As I walked on home, I found myself thinking that if I had been in the car, I never would have run into Don and we never would have had that conversation. That's but one of the many upsides of walking: the constant opportunity for community and friend interaction.

Large inflated cat - 10 feet? makes me smile  Driving to the grocery today, I went past a house on a corner which has heavily indulged in the inflatables market for Halloween. There are pumpkins and bats and ghosts and a huge (truly) black cat with an arched back and upright tail. The cat is easily eight feet high at its back, and the tail makes it even larger and taller. Warren and I are not inflatable folks, but the displays of others never fail to make me smile. Especially when it is an enormous inflated cat on a quiet residential street.

ghosts of Halloweens past   I can't look at Halloween decorations without thinking of my own boys. When Sam and Ben were young, we had a series of Halloween windsocks - pumpkins, skeletons, vampires, Frankenstein - that hung on the front porch. The annual hanging of the windsocks was a big deal to two little boys once upon a time. (And I'm glad my two guys predated the inflatables trend.)

drumming rain in early morning move closer to W   It rained early this morning and I woke up just enough to hear it drumming on the roof. I moved closer to Warren, sound asleep, and let the rhythms lull me back to sleep.

impossibly blue   A few hours later, the sun was out and the sky was the color I call "October blue." October blue is impossibly blue, especially when a flaming golden maple is stuck up against it. It is so blue my throat aches just looking at it. The sky is that color right now.

The day calls and I need to turn back to the tasks at hand, which are multiplying rapidly. There are other posts still out there, tugging at my sleeve, tripping my thoughts up as I walk, but Time is tapping its foot. For today, these notes and scraps will have to mark my place, tossed into the wind, tossed into that impossibly blue October sky.