The Fall Begins

Today was the end of summer.

Signs had been everywhere all through the last week. On Thursday, when I left for PT, I saw something red in front of the garage. On closer inspection, it was a red leaf that had fallen from our neighbor's enormous tree. Looking up, the red leaf had a cluster of still attached friends. I felt my mouth get cottony and my heart beat a little faster. The fall is now looming ahead.

Andrew and I made the most of our last summer weekend. Andrew's brother came to visit, and the guys worked on some final mitre sawing on Friday night, and not without some glitches, we rented the 1989 classic "Field of Dreams," because had decided to take a Saturday morning road trip out to Dyersville, Iowa to see the movie site. If you've ever imagined what the Field of Dreams looks like after seeing the movie, your image is probably spot on. It's a white farmhouse with a baseball field in the middle of a cornfield. We hung out for about an hour, Andrew and his bro "had a catch" (we all noted how the famous line seemed awkward, since local dialect would have you saying "play catch"), the guys ran the bases, and we went back home.*

In the evening, we hit up our local minor league team's ballpark, and then we wandered over to the riverfront to a street festival where we listened to Joe Bonamassa, a favorite artist among Andrew and his siblings, and also the performer of the first song we danced to at our wedding (a recording, I should probably make that bit clear).

I can't really complain. If there had to be an end of summer, we at least did things up right.

After I finished prepping for class last night (read: throwing anything that could be recycled on the floor so Andrew could clean it up later, as I forgot that I've lost my ability to bend), Andrew and I attacked our wall calender.

Lazy days are over for us. I counted 3 days from now until September 27th that are open. From meetings to tailgates, we're going to be on the go quite a bit. Not that it won't be fun - because there are plenty of exciting things in the works - but there will barely be a moment to breathe in that crisp Autumn air. After this realization, we declared Saturday as "Married Day." The plan is simple: No planning anything, no work, and no house projects.

A few years ago, planning to spend a day sitting around doing nothing would have seemed ridiculous to me. But now, I'm just bummed that it's only Monday.

*Not without expressing our distaste for the mass marketing of "If you build it, they will come," since the real line is "If you build it, he will come." But, the heat-sensitive "magic" t-shirt where players emerge from the corn due to your body heat with the same tag line was kinda cool.