« Wash, Mama Wash: Dr. John
»

But you can’t plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves.

Skip, my factotum, is here, and the deck furniture and decorations are disappearing, some being covered and others being stored in plastic bins. I was outside for a while just chatting but I got chilly so I came inside. Skip doesn’t need any instructions from me. He does this every year. For him it’s a job, but for me it is the sad ending of movie nights, barbecues, sitting by myself under the stars watching fireflies flit through the backyard and listening to cicadas which always remind me of maracas.

The sun taunted us a bit earlier. It came and went quickly. It’s getting chillier and the sky is cloudy. The breeze comes and goes. Right now everything is still, not even a leaf is moving. I think I’ll read today. I’m thinking cozy under the covers. If I nap, it’s all good.

I’m wearing what I think of as my winter uniform: flannel pants, socks and slippers and a sweatshirt with a pouch to keep my hands warm. When I was a kid, I had pairs of flannel pajamas. When I got home from school and wasn’t going out, I’d change into pajamas because they were comfy and warm. I always wore slipper socks. They and the pajamas were traditional Christmas gifts. My pajamas had snowmen or elves, Christmas trees or even Santa on them. My slippers were usually red. They had a sort of knitted top and leather soles. I liked the scuffing sounds the soles made on the wooden floor. My mother didn’t.

My mother wore slippers, sort of slippers. The toes were open, and they had no backs. I always thought they were useless because to me slippers are meant to keep your feet warm, but my mother said her feet never got cold. The rest of her did as she always had the thermostat up high. We’d complain. She’d get feisty.

I know why the heat was up so high. I’ve learned the older I get the less tolerant I am of cold. My mother’s house would be perfect now.

Explore posts in the same categories: Musings

This entry was posted on November 2, 2015 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Comments on “But you can’t plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves.”

  1. Birgit's avatar Birgit Says:

    November 2, 2015 at 2:36 pm

    Some quite nice autumn days here, warm enough to eat outside again. Today I had to go downtown and saw that they started to build the wooden shacks for our annual Christmas market. It just seemed wrong, I don’t want to think of Christmas yet.

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      November 2, 2015 at 5:07 pm

      Birgit,
      The rest of the week is supposed to be warm, but Skip had time today so today it was. The deck looks so desolate with the furniture covered.

      I agree. It is too early for Christmas.

  2. Richard's avatar Richard Says:

    November 2, 2015 at 5:16 pm

    ‘Factotum.’ A perfectly good, yet somehow underused, word from the 1560s. Don’t ask why, but for reasons unknown to Po’ Me, the word brings about an association with the descriptor ‘High Popalorum.’ I think that’s a more recent term, possibly from the Bing Crosby era.

    Being a renter in a gated community, I don’t have the outdoor furnitures, BBQs, fire pits, etc etc. Those things are to be found at my daughter’s, tho’. I imagine in a few weeks they’ll be prepping those items just as you’re doing now.

    Today is another WINNAH! Grey, semi-drizzly, cold-ish … ah jes’ lubs me some greyness. You’d think I hated hurricane weather, esp. since I was flooded not only by Katrina but by three earlier ‘canes as well. Nope. I love the raw, elemental powers on display. To be sure, I’m not all that fond of having three-plus feet of water in the house, but my attitude has always been that whatever’s left is the stuff I’m supposed to have. I know, I know – that’s so ‘Zen.’ See how ‘sensitive’ ‘n stuff I can be?

    Not quite cold enough for sweatshirts yet. I wore one for my workout yesterday, but I’ll skip it tomorrow. My body’s internal heater makes a sweatshirt like a sauna, and heat’s not a thing I deal with graciously.

    I never wore slippers of any kind. I remember Dad wearing slippers, tho’. They were leather, and almost like two-part construction ‘loafer’ style. Mom wore the terrycloth strapless / backless / foam sole / slip-ins normally called ‘mules.’ I was always scared they were going to cause her to fall ‘cuz they were usually slipping off more than staying on.

    I find it’s just easier to go barefoot around the house. Even after the two episodes, years apart, in which I broke the little toe on first the right foot and then the left, I still ‘pay my money and take my chances.’ When I broke the little toe on my right foot, I went to the ER. The docs and nurses said all they could do was put cotton between the toes, tape ’em, and put what they called a ‘splint’ on to keep ’em from moving. Okay. A couple years later when I broke the little toe on my left foot, you’t think I’d remember that and just do what they did the first time, right? Nuh-unh, Herbie. I trekked back to the ER, and when I told ’em about having broken the other one a few years ago, it was all they could do to not break out in guffaws and snorts. A couple of smirks and chuckles broke thru the barrier, tho’ – esp. when they got around to putting the cotton between the toes …

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      November 2, 2015 at 5:41 pm

      Richard,
      I had to look up High Popalorum. Come to find out it was Huey Long. He figured the political parties had us coming and going.

      My deck looks so desolate now. The furniture, all but one chair, is covered. The candles are down from the trees. No more magical evenings.

      Your sensitivity touches my heart!

      We haven’t had a hurricane for a few years. I remember a few which brought down huge trees, electric lines and turned the leaves on one side of the trees brown. I am not close enough to the water to worry about flooding. The snow, though, hits us all. I remember the storm where I lost electricity for so long my house got down to 37˚.

      My mother wore the same slippers as yours. My dad loved his leather ones from L.L. Bean. I was glad as they were a perfect Christmas present.

      In the summer, I go barefoot in the house and on the deck. In the winter my feet get too cold so out come my comfy slippers. The tradition is alive: mine are from L.L. Bean.

      I think I broke a toe. It is still painful and has taken a different angle that the rest of my toes. It looks just a bit odd.

  3. Bob's avatar Bob Says:

    November 2, 2015 at 9:18 pm

    This morning the sky was obscured by a low overcast and fog due to all the moisture in the air from the rain that fell on Friday and Saturday. The temperature this morning was in the upper 50s. As I drove towards the airport the fog became very thick and the visibility was down to about 1,000 feet. By noon the fog had burned off and the temperature topped out at 70 degrees. It was great driving to and from work with my sun roof open.

    I hate wearing slippers and or a bath robe. Going barefoot and wearing PJs around the house is fine with me. I can’t walk in slippers that have no backs because my feet are not that educated. I have two robes that I never wear. Both are terry cloth and both were gifts. The long one was a gift from my spouse and the other is shorter and was a gift for staying at the Hilton Garden Inn at the airport in Montreal. The hotel even embroidered my name on the robe. A couple of my friends and I were discussing over lunch how many robes we had in our closet that we never wear. I beat them with two. A robe is the kind of gift that a spouse buys for her husband for Christmas who has everything. You thank her for the gift by telling her how much you love it, give her a kiss and hang it up in the closet forever. Already advertisements for holiday stuff is on TV. If we didn’t have the winter holidays we would have to invent them to prevent our economy from tanking. 🙂

    • katry's avatar katry Says:

      November 2, 2015 at 9:48 pm

      Bob,
      Your morning temperature was about the same as ours but we were without the fog. By the afternoon it was up to the low 60’s. The rest of the week will be unseasonably warm.

      I never wear a bathrobe. I don’t think anyone in my family ever has. My slippers look like those wool clogs from Germany. Sometimes I even forget to change from those slippers to shoes when I go outside. Nobody notices.

      Years ago the holiday hype was much less, almost none existed, and store owners didn’t put all their hopes on Christmas. It worked great because people weren’t so greedy either. Christmas much must simpler.


Comments are closed.