Perfection

I think the beauty of something tends to lay in its imperfections... 

 

Happy Fall-ing

Is this smell of new crisp air, of change, of time moving and getting colder, is this something just I smell?  Is it possible that others feel this intoxicating mix of nostalgia, melancholy, and joy all at once?

I love this season.  Until this year I have always felt torn - What IS my favorite time of year?  June and July always had a lot of clout - my birthday, no school, playing outside (in shorts) til much later, popsicles...  But there was something about fall even though its the beginning of a school year and the gateway to some bitter cold Midwestern months.  It was a tight race between early summer and mid fall , but I'm ready to declare a winner.  Yes, folks, autumn has my heart.  Recent events took June down more than a few notches, but I think it really has more to do with how well I know myself now versus when I was 12 (when I first consciously considered this question), and in that self-awareness, giving my instincts the weight they merit.

In northern California we don't get the brilliant crisp autumn rainbow that is so much part of these months in the Midwest, and this year I realized that it is not from the leaves crunching or the color of the trees that I draw my happiness in this season.  Here we get more fog, cooler temperatures, and rain, and yet I every day I am finding myself happy just to be able to feel this shift, to feel the melancholy AND the joy.  The renewed wetness doesn't bring me down because I have never been bothered by the rain.  I find it peaceful to fall asleep and wake up to the sound of raindrops, and figure it's a good excuse to invest in some galoshes that make me feel like I'm 7 again. 

This autumn brought me a sense of relief, from what I cannot say.  I still have the same questions, doubts, sadnesses, and insecurities I had two months ago.  Today they seem more manageable, and I am happy to see the rain and smell the woodsmoke and put an extra layer on. 

So here's to autumn.  Let's raise a glass (of cider! or hot chocolate! or brandy!) and give thanks.

Hang On Little Tomato

This  morning I was in a great mood.  Slept in, read a book, went for coffee, and when I came back to the farm to start my work day I searched through a box to look for an Emmylou Harris CD I thought I had in there, because I saw her perform last night and was inspired to dig it out.

Instead I found, almost immediately, a cd my bother Brendan made for me.  I'm pretty sure it was Christmas either 2006 or 2007, because the color theme was as such.  

It is a thin cd case with a red square insert and CAITLIN written out on the top in a slightly darker red.  Inside the blank cd has my name scrawled on it what I'm pretty sure was a well used sharpie in Brendan's distinctive handwriting.  On the inside face of the cover sheet is the track list, as follows...

1     Think I'm in Love - Beck

2     Hang on Little Tomato - Pink Martini

3     Over and Over Again - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

4     Wildcat - Ratatat

5     Ciagarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright

6     Dois Rios - Skank

7     Nausea - Beck

8     Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight - Rilo Kiley

9     Amando Mio - Pink Martini 

10   The Skin of my Country Yellow Teeth - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

11   Loud Pipes - Ratatat

12   Electrik Boogie - Ursula 1000

13   She Crys Your Name - Beth Orton

14   Crips - Ratatat

15   Le Plus - Carla Bruni

16   Soldier Jane - Beck

17   Superrob - Tosca

I didn't know what to do but really wanted to put the cd back in the box and not to have found it, and not to have to feel the way about it that I do because he's dead.  I think I gasped (in my head I did anyway) and then started crying and sat down where I was, between my bed and my dresser.  I was left there for a while wondering if anything I could wipe my face off was within arms reach and if I was going to dry up and be able to have a good day, or if this one was going to change it.  Luckily it was the former, and eventually I climbed up off the floor and put the cd down on some pads of paper I had also pulled out, wiped off my face and went to work.

At point this afternoon I opened up my personal email along with my work one, and I saw I had a message from Corporate Perks.  I'm not totally sure what Corporate Perks is, but Brendan signed Megan and me up for it when he officially got his job in the spring of '08 and I think it gives you discounts on a bunch of stuff.  I remember him emailing us to let us know it wasn't spam, it was legitimately from him and valid.  I never got around to doing anything with it beyond not deleting the emails.  I get them every once in a while still, but I usually open them briefly so they're not marked as 'new' but don't want to read them and can't delete them.

I opened this one and read: 

Dear Caitlin,

Brendan Scanlon has invited you to have guest access to Corporate Perks, an exclusive benefit for Corporate Perks employees. Your guest account expires in 30 days unless you register, and so please act now. Corporate Perks can help you save money on everything from groceries, cell phone bills, movie tickets, clothes and accessories to electronics, vacations and personal care items.

To access your guest account simply login to Corporate Perks by using the information below:  

This thankfully didn't reduce me to a soggy mess but rather made me smile as my gut ached.  "Oh Corporate Perks...", I thought, "If only you knew who you were talking to about expiring..."

 It was a good day today.  It was full of reminders that things Brendan touched are limited - finite.  But I got off the floor and and smiled more than a few times so it was a good day.

Hello October.

Here you are again.  Just like you are every year, right after September.  Why is it you seemed to arrive so much more quickly this time around?  Are you going to hurry along like the last few months have?

Cold nights and rain beat you by a couple weeks this year.  Will you retaliate with more cold and more rain, or will you give us some last days of warmth and sun that we've become used to and will miss if they don't arrive?

You brought with you good moods and laughter, which might be necessary as you also heralded in closer deadlines and more to do.  If we can laugh and smile as we do what we have to, though, we will be able to thrive in our busy-ness not just get through it.

So, welcome.  Stay a while if you could.  We know the next few months get all the glory but I say let's show them what it's like to enjoy a month just because we want to, not because the calender gives us a few days off.

Upturn

I have been so down lately.  But that's not so interesting so I won't write on that until I can figure out what was interesting about it.

I feel happy tonight for the first time in weeks.  What a relief.

My dear cousin (one of many, but one of a kind) Danny is on the farm here in California; he's staying for a couple weeks to do some portraits of people.  He's an artist and has no idea how adorable, or talented, he is.  (Some background:  Danny is the middle child between Mike, who was born two weeks after me and whom I was in the same class with from 4th through 12th grade, and Annie, whom I've written about before.  The three of them and the three of us [Megan, Brendan, and I] were both raised on the East side of Madison and are closer to being siblings than cousins in many ways.)

Tonight Aunt, Uncle, Danny, and I sat around after dinner after having a lively discussion on abortion and health care and somehow got into liquor. I mean for some reason I ended up sitting on the floor rooting through the liquor cabinet and we tasted the difference between a fifty year old whiskey and a much younger scotch, then opened up the encyclopedia to discover the differences between gin and vodka.

As I surrounded myself with dusty and interesting liquor bottles and realized how much fun I was having, even though I have to get up way too early to start the farmers market rotation again, Danny asked me if they were witnessing my downward spiral, and the dog in the meantime had fit three tennis balls in his mouth.  I haven't laughed like this in a hot minute and it feels good to dust it off.