I don’t know about the rest of you, but I felt the seasons change about the middle of August this year. I was trying to explain to someone what I meant by that, and I realized that what I was talking about was more something sensed than seen. Autumn has a certain quality to the air, a certain shading of blue to the sky that is just shy of the deep blue of summer. At least around here, and in my perception, they do.
We’re always trying, aren’t we, to fit Mother Nature into our own “human made” little slots? Of course, bless her heart, she doesn’t always fit. But Labor Day has come and gone, and in this part of the world the kids returned to school yesterday, so therefore, summer has waned and autumn is at hand.
The years go so quickly any more. At least this waning summer didn’t seem to pass us by as fast as last summer did. Last year, we spent a total of 3 weeks away from home—two in July, beginning and end, and one in the middle of August. Since those trips were three separate ones, we spent at least a week for each one in preparation of traveling. A total of six weeks in which we were either gone or not paying attention to the weather, and that was half of the summer creeping by without notice.
My beloved and I have mostly stayed at home this year. He has had two “staycations” so far, and they were weeks well spent doing things around the house that had been put off for far too long. He didn’t begrudge the lack of travel, which to me is quite amazing. I’ve dubbed him the traveling fool in recent times, a title he quite likes and up until this year, was well earned.
We were to be heading off to Pennsylvania next week, but our friend and his mother have been having some unexpected circumstances, and out of respect for their needs, we’re staying home. Well, home, as in Canada. We did find a resort not too far from here that had last minute availability, so we’re going away at the end of this week. We’ll take four nights on the south shore of Lake Simcoe. We’re not great fans of canoeing or boating, water skiing or the like. But we do, both of us, really like to sit by the water, have the occasional cup of coffee and read our books.
One of us has a publishing deadline and will therefore be writing a book—but I do have to read what I write, so it’s all good. I don’t really consider this, what I do for a living, to be “work”. Not, at least, in the same way I considered my job work when I was an accounting clerk.
I’m looking forward to my interlude on the lake. We’ve never been to this resort, but it’s only about two and a half hours from home. It’s actually about ten minutes or so from my friend’s house, the one who stayed over last week and who I met when we were both ten.
We may drop in on her on our way there, as she invited us to do so. Now that we have reconnected after several years apart, I would like to keep in touch.
I have a dream, because I believe that as long as you have a dream, you are someone going somewhere. You need to keep looking forward, I think. You need to have something to work toward. My dream is to buy another house. This one, which has a basement and an upstairs, and is situated on land that is terraced, just doesn’t work for me anymore. The goal is to save as much as possible over the next five years, and then see what there is to be had.
I would really like a place that has some water on it, but that is just under the heading of “bonus”. Mostly, I want a ranch style building on a piece of land I can walk on, with room enough for an office and a guest bedroom, and an out building for Mr. Ashbury to tinker in. I might be sixty-five moving into my dream house, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
In the mean time and for now, I’ll be content to have a few days away to absorb some “pieces of quiet” on the shores of a lake, and to spend those pieces of quiet with my husband.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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