Autumn Leaf

There is definitely a chill in the air in the early morning and it is cold enough at night for the leaves to start turning, presaging a change of season. During the day it is still quite warm and summery. We have big juicy apples on our espaliered tree in our tiny Berkeley backyard and a strange lilylike flower has sprung forth from a plant that I thought was dead or going dormant. It is the time of year when I decide on what I do based on the fact that the weather could turn cold and wintry anytime. And it goes on being warm and summery for several weeks. I guess that is the definition of Autumn...a shoulder season.

We had fun with the grands last night--they went to bed like little lambs and fell immediately asleep. No such luck for us. I took my laptop but couldn't connect to the internet, and then the whole thing died for lack of a power cord to recharge it, so I'm afraid my comments never got made. I read two issues of Parent's Magazine (surely that would put me to sleep but no such luck). We got our second wind watching the cats, who appeared as soon as the kids went to bed and tore around like crazy, until Mom and Dad got home at 12:30. Then we hi-tailed it home and were sound asleep by 1am--about3 hours later than usual.

I met a friend this morning whom I haven't seen in awhile. He and his wife had a couture clothing business for many years called Jean/Marc. Now he is an artist and she runs a "Fashion Incubator" for Macy's--a group of 6 fledgling designers whom she is supposed to nurture and inspire to design their own clothing lines. His stories about them were hilarious--the divas, the meltdowns, the questions about what they actually learned in design school. But he had a couple of "Look Books"-- brochures with pictures of a couple of the individual designers and he was clearly quite proud of them.There was only one outfit that could conceivably be worn by a woman of more than a certain age, and then only if the skirt was about a foot longer!

Needless to say, today was fairly quiet. OilMan played golf and is now taking his sacred nap, and I had lunch with my "Wednesday Friend". We've been having lunch together and discussing all manner of things for 40 years. Our husbands can't understand what on earth we still have left to talk about.....