Weather

Why do people talk about the weather so much? I suppose it's something universal and, usually at least, non-confrontational. Since I don't feel like anything controversial, I guess I'll stick to weather for today.

Last week was so hot we went through all the ice we could make in a day, so hot even I was drinking ice water, so hot I slept with nothing but a sheet and still left my feet dangling off the side of the bed. Sylvia, unwilling to sleep unless swaddled in one of her numerous fleece blankets, got a heat rash so bad her school called to ask about it.

This week it's cold. Finally I see the changing of seasons here. It actually feels like fall, with the humongous garden spiders leaving webs over every corner and a definite feeling of things ending, of life going dormant overriding even the most manicured and irrigated SoCal garden. Every other year October had just felt dry; this year it feels like the world around me is casting off the last hopeful seeds and cysts before dying, or at least going to sleep. Perhaps spending those last couple of weeks of August and beginning of September in Utah primed me for finding autumn this year, or maybe I'm finally understanding the seasons in this place.

Of course, next year we'll be in Australia. I wonder how the seasons will be different. I wonder how different it will be celebrating halloween in spring, ushering in the fall in March, having a winter birthday. I wonder how long it'll take me to get used to that arrangement of seasons, how disoriented I'll be suffering the heat of summer in January and the cold of winter in July.