Leaves

After my last, miserable post I knew I had to post a correction of some sort soon, but this was a very busy week. I conquered my fears, sort of, and managed to do an enormous amount of grading. But the pile is still very high.

I realized one reason why everything seems so hard this fall -- Rocket Boy has a job! He is gone until 5:30 or 6 every weekday, which is of course a wonderful thing, but it means I don't have a babysitter anymore. Nor a cook, nor a housekeeper. If I come home at 2:25 pm with a huge amount of work to do, it doesn't matter. I still have to leave the house at 2:30 to pick up the twins, and then I am on duty until they go to bed, maybe around 9 pm or so. If I need to go to the grocery store, guess what? they come too! la la la. Or they refuse to, and then I cope without what I needed to buy. And if I need to take a nap, tough luck! or else I do, and this happens: the woman who runs the daycare center two doors down comes and knocks at the door and yells at me because the boos ran down there while I was asleep and picked berries off a bush and threw them at the windows! Hello? Are we seven and a half years old or three? Obviously, I can never take a nap again. I'm working on stay-awake tactics -- sometimes it's so hard.

I'm trying to work on positive thinking, too, such as "I love my boos!" and "Think how sad I'd be if something happened to them!" and also "Remember how ghastly it was to work for the IRS!" and "Remember how awful it was when Rocket Boy didn't have a job!" and "At least I'm only 55 -- think if I'd had the boos at 50, then I'd be 58 now!" (That one isn't very helpful, since it inspires negative thoughts such as "think if I'd had the boos at 30, then I'd only be 38 now!")

I think the bottom line is that I'm so happy Rocket Boy is working, and I'm so happy I don't work for the IRS anymore, and I love my boos with all my heart and soul, but I'm really tired. That's all.

Well, OK, tired, but also stressed out about teaching and all that. Can't forget that part. Ironically, though, something happened in my department this week to make me think I may not have my teaching job much longer. Not sure, of course -- it's all rumors right now -- but scary rumors. "Resume time," my next-door cubicle neighbor said, when she heard the rumors. OMG, resumes. I am just too old for this. We'll see.

OK, on a completely different topic, we paid our September visit to the cabin today (we've been going there about once a month all summer). It was an absolutely gorgeous day, but we were just about one week too late. All the aspen around the cabin have already dropped their leaves or at least turned tan.

Next year I must remember to go to the cabin in mid-September. September 26th is too late. September 12th or 13th might have been good. It's so pretty at the cabin when the aspen are -- I almost typed "in bloom" -- when the aspen are yellow.

But there were stunning stands of aspen still out there. Kenosha Pass was blindingly gold, and there was a spot near Fairplay that was just magnificent. For some reason I didn't get a photo of anything spectacular, but this one shows some nice color in the distance (with already-over aspen in the foreground).

The traffic on Highway 285 was awful, and there were electronic message boards warning of even worse traffic tomorrow. Rocket Boy couldn't understand why, but I'm pretty sure it was the leaf people. This was predicted to be the last pretty weekend, so all of Colorado decided to drive to Kenosha Pass and look at it.

Back at the cabin, I took a walk down to the beaver ponds with Kid A.

No beaver (and no moose, sigh), but there were some ducks, which is unusual. I took a photo of just the shimmering water.

I love this time of year -- and of course it's really just beginning. The cabin is twice as high as Boulder. Boulder itself won't turn color for a few weeks yet. October is a glorious month, my favorite time of the year.

So I must try to pull myself together and learn how to live with my work schedule and the work itself and my childcare duties. I'll try. That's what you do, you try.