Drip, drip, drip

Chilly, wet, foggy, drippy, sodden last day of October. By the time the weekend is over, hardly any of the gorgeous color will be left because the wind and rain will have swept it all away.

This time, it means business. You can tell.

Even if you're not from here, you can tell. I passed by a conversation yesterday in which a young guy - twenty-something, I'd say - was saying, "And I gotta get out of here. I need some sun." But the sun was just here. It's not February. This has only just started, this gray and white sort of gloom. The damp is only just now getting a good foothold on the days.

Perfect weather, in other words.

THIS is why I live here. THIS is my kind of weather. The coiled, crouching, vigilant readiness of summer has finally understood what the autumn was saying, and is willing now to put some music on to play and curl up with a good book and some richly flavored tea. It is 10:00 in the morning, and no brighter than it was at about eight, or at about four yesterday afternoon.

You can tell that it's day, though. The sky's white and not black.

This is reading weather. Writing weather. Thinking weather. (Complaining husband weather. It used to worry me. But now I think it's funny that the guy who grew up here is personally offended at the gloom every winter.) Everything drips and rarely freezes, and nothing dries or warms up all the way if it's too far from the fire. Candles are lit every evening. Halloween trick-or-treat ghosties and ghoulies will have rain gear covering their costumes this year. Sometimes they don't, but this year they will.

It feels good. I don't know if my ancestors were rose bushes or moles, but this feels good.