October might be my favorite month. It's so ridiculously beautiful up here in the hinterlands when the leaves turn, I just can't get over it. Every single year, I'm blown away again. October is why I live in Minnesota.
That, and that most of my family and friends and both Jay's and my jobs are here.
But if I lived somewhere else, I'd want to come back here for the first two weeks of October.
The other night, my folks were here for dinner. It had been a gorgeous day; blue clear skies, warm temps. My dad called it the most beautiful day ever.
"No," I said. "The most beautiful day ever was October 6, 1994. I made a note of it."
He laughed but I was serious. I remember that day well, and for the rest of my life, when times are tough, I console myself with the memory of that day. It was morning, I was driving around the east side of Lake Harriet. The trees were peaking; several dry years had caused them to turn a bit early. The sky was blue but the air had that misty, silver, atmospheric quality you sometimes get over water. It wasn't hazy, but it shimmered. As I drove, I looked across the lake to the bandstand and the riot of color that the trees had become and I realized this was it; the most gorgeous day in the history of the world.
Maybe it was only the most gorgeous moment, but that was it and I saw it.
Hopefully, next week I'll have time to sit and write a lot of what's been going through my head the last few weeks. THe trouble is, it takes awhile and I have no time. When the gang isn't at home, I've got too much work to do, when Jay's home, he hogs the laptop and when Josie's home, she wants me to watch Heroes with her, which she has become completely addicted to. She feels exactly the same way about Peter Petrelli as I felt about Mr. Darcy while watching Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.
Now I have to go paint. Tuition is due next week.
Ann Coulter's column at
www.townhall.com today is laugh out loud funny, and a microcosm of what's wrong with today's media.
