You people who don a cozy sweater and scarf and then head off apple picking, whilst sipping your pumpkin spice lattes and kicking around leaves? I envy you. Well, not the pumpkin spice latte part – pumpkin spice is NOT my jam, I am, as we all know, a mint chocolate girl – but the rest feels so idyllic and fanciful to me. What must that be like, I think. Imagine going apple picking. Imagine leaving the house in a cozy sweater and scarf. Imagine not digging out legwarmers and winter coats on the last weekend of September.
When I went to upload and name these photos, there were a dozen already named some variation of “Snow September” which is a bit depressing. My husband had the weather channel on for a few minutes on the weekend, and there was a reporter there who was on the streets trying to get an interview with passers-by. She was over-the-top dramatic about SNOW! In September! and kept trying to drum up some kind of enthusiastic dramatic response from the people walking by in their parkas and toques. Can you BELIEVE it? I mean it’s September! she kept saying, and every single interviewee shrugged and was pretty complacent, albeit not particularly happy. Who is this woman? I thought. Where did she come from? She’s obviously not local. Accepting weird and appalling weather in a stoic and martyr-like way is part of our cultural identity, along with day-drinking and cowboy hat-wearing in July.
Things are starting to melt; all the trees that had turned colour before the snowfall are completely decimated now, while many trees are still completely green-leaved, in stark contrast to the snow. As I walked Barkley, with trees dripping all the melting snow on my head, I thought it felt like spring. Spring! The fact that green leaves and thick, wet snow feels like spring to me is a very sad testament to this hellhole I call home.
But enough about the weather! I have much more important things to talk about. For one thing, I picked up my new reading glasses yesterday and I’m really going to lean in to my new look, the Sexy Librarian.
Have you ever worn reading glasses? They are really quite bizarre. As I had Mr. Magoo-strength glasses, and then contact lenses, from age 11 to 25, my experience has been that when you put on glasses, everything becomes clearer. With reading glasses, the book you are reading becomes clearer, it’s true, but everything else is completely blurry. I mentioned this to the fellow helping me fit the glasses, and he said “That’s why you always see people looking up OVER their glasses.” Aha! Now I understand.
My new look:
My husband kept looking over at me while I was reading last night.
“It’s just so strange,” he said, “I just haven’t seen you in glasses in so long.” Maybe he really likes the Sexy Librarian look, maybe he’s waiting for me to slide off my cardigan, whip off my glasses, and shake my hair out of the bun.
He’ll have to wait on the bun thing; that baby is held in place by many – MANY – bobby pins. On that note, you will be all happy to know that I had a hair appointment and my Hair Therapist and I agreed that we would start “putting length on,” which, given I can’t stand split ends and get my hair trimmed every five weeks, will take a while. Probably it will be another 9-10 months before we really see a difference, but I have been taking biotin lately, so maybe it will be faster than I think.
Now I can be one of those people who are constantly looking for where they left their glasses!
This side table is normally stacked with library books, but a few days ago I finished my stack and had no holds come in, a rare thing. I decided to re-read The Handmaid’s Tale; I last read it about twenty-five years ago and let me tell you, it reads very differently for a woman of 44 than it did a woman of 19. For one thing, I do not remember being much horrified by the – spoiler alert – Removing Child From Parents storyline. I also find that I have different empathy for the different characters. While it is not IMPOSSIBLE that I could find myself pregnant at this age – EXTREMELY UNLIKELY but not impossible – I am much closer to being a Wife than a Handmaid. Or, given my enormous load of domestic chores, a Martha.
Speaking of which, it’s my dad’s birthday today – Happy Birthday, Dad! – and we are having a big family party on the weekend. I am in charge of bringing the cake, or, more accurately, cakes, as there will be about 25 people there. I’m bringing cupcakes for the little ones, and they will be – on my five-year-old niece’s strong suggestion – worms and dirt. Worms and dirt! I haven’t made those since my bake sale days, god bless. I am sure I will have many cake-related photos to show you by this time next week. On that note, I have many Martha-like duties to complete before I can settle back down with my reading glasses and The Handmaid’s Tale, so I must sign off. Plus, I picked up four holds at the library this afternoon so there will be a lot of Reading Glasses Duty in the next three weeks. I just hope my husband can contain himself. xo
I like your new glasses! They look great.
I like the glasses. Odds are you’ll end up doing what I have done. I have an office pair, a home pair and a pair in my purse, with extras scattered around just in case.
I think we both spent a good chunk of September wishing for fall, except what I wanted was for summer to go away, and as of yesterday it seems to have done that. I’m not so keen on winter, either, and who knows how I’d be if it started in September.
I’ve been wearing reading glasses for seven years. I’m not comfortable unless I have 2-3 pairs because they are constantly getting lost or broken. I have one prescription pair and then I supplement with the drugstore kind.
Noah and I read the Handmaid’s Tale this summer. It was the first time I’d read it since college. I did think Martha would be the best choice for me at this stage of life. Not that they got to choose.
I can relate on the glasses dront. I wear contacts. Now I have cheap readers that I buy at the grocery store. Getting ready to go somewhere recently Curly said ‘your hair looks good – just take off those glasses’. She hates that I wear them like a granny but otherwise I cannot see anything. I could NOT live in a place where it snows in Sept. Chicago weather is bad enough.