October at the Door

I am feeling a little low lately for no particular reason under the sun. I know that stress gets to me and my upcoming artist's retreat weekend away (no kids! EEP!) although exciting is always stressful in the prelude. I always worry about how it will actually feel to hang out with people. The truth is, I'm still in high school in my brain and worried subconsciously about exactly how to fit in. I worry that I'll be lonely or overwhelmed or just odd and that people will point it out or not...or whatever. Bah! I wish I could somehow rise above it and just revel in the deserved euphoria that should come with this sort of exciting occasion. A weekend on Cape Cod, at a friend's family cottage? Round the clock painting? Trips out in the row boats? Personal space? Why is my brain panicking about this? What is wrong with me? If you have any idea how to stop the manic deluge inside my head, let me know. I wish I wasn't this insecure.

In other news, our stove is here....and although I am sure I saw the installation man grimace when he moved it and saw the horrific mess our family had created underneath it, it is all okay. The stove is gleaming and it works, it really cooks, it smells like plastic a bit from the factory but it has so many features and doo-dads that I honestly have to read the manual to be sure of myself before I turn anything on. We baked a test batch of chocolate chip cookies to be sure everything was in order. A double batch. Enough for a whole weekend away without Mommy in the house.

The leaves have just begun to turn and the bittersweet is just cracking open and showing dark orange glints. The dogwood tree, just over the hedge in our back-neighbor's yard is a dark plummy burgundy. The bees are flitting between manic gathering (warm days) and silently internal days (cool weather). The boys and I are doing a lot more reading and making trips at least once a week to the library. It feels so good to be going often enough that the librarians are recognizing us, makes me feel like I'm doing something right.

Nib is hardly a baby now but instead a lanky little boy, he runs around behind his big brothers and has become quite the little chatterbox. He says "Bad job!" with high enthusiasm. Calling forth judgement seems like a very worthy pursuit. He loves to eat dried fruit of any kind which he gets out of the pantry himself every time I turn around and is a huge fan of books. He wakes up every morning around 5-6 AM and the first thing he does is trot in with a book. It's a good thing we're book lovers who mean to get up early every day. We have our chipper alarm clock. He usually wakes me up by sitting on me with a book in his hands.