When we moved into this house in June 2010, I remember saying—in the self-assured way that new homeowners have of saying things like this—"it's all going to be done by Christmas."
Oh, self. Oh, sweet, idiotic self. I'd roll my eyes skyward right now if they weren't already stuck from rolling them every time I've remembered saying it.
Oh dear, I've been terrible, haven't I? Haven't posted for at least a week, and there's no real excuse for it except that I've been so busy at work, and when I haven't been busy at work, I've been busy getting to work—and from work, come to think of it—because I have a two-hour commute these days (hour and a half if I'm lucky), and that seems to truncate the days an awful lot. Other things I've neglected recently include my email, my eyebrows, my roots, the towering pile of overdue library books on my bedside table, and the state of my house in general.
Every morning, my alarm goes off on my phone and I grab it and shut it off and spend the next five minutes lazily scanning the subject lines of my emails in a half-asleep haze. (Do you do this too? Reach for your phone upon waking? Do I need an intervention or has this just become acceptable behaviour these days, I can't tell. I stopped knowing what was borderline sociopathic and what wasn't when the guy next to me answered his phone in a movie theatre. This is how societies fall apart, people.)
In an unsurprising display of immense unoriginality, I would like to announce that my favorite season is fall. Fall? Autumn? Which should I have said there? I realized yesterday that I've lived full-time in the states for exactly ten years—plus six part-time years before that—which means I probably shouldn't feel such a fraud saying "fall," and yet I do because it's not what I grew up saying. I mean, what if I'm turning into Madonna, except the opposite? Would somebody tell me if that was happening?
First of all, is it weird if the adult accompanying the child holds out a trick-or-treating bag too? That's kind of weird, right? Is it? I don't even know. I was just pretty excited that we even got some trick-or-treaters after the unintentionally creepy note I had to leave on the front gate.
Come on, children, walk into my vestibule and knock on my door! I'm not a serial killer! Would a serial killer draw you such an adorable pumpkin?
