Summer's End Melancholy

It's fall, which is usually my favorite season. I love the way fall smells, I love the autumn blue of the sky and the crispness of the air and being able to have a fire in the fireplace. I love corn mazes and carving pumpkins and sugar cookies frosted orange in the shape of pumpkins. I love all these things.

But, yesterday, we had to close our pool for the winter, and, honestly, it was worse than taking down the Christmas tree for bringing on melancholy.

Before we closed, I sat on the diving board in sweat pants and a long sleeved t-shirt, with my bare feet dangling in the cold water, looking at the perfect blue rectangle that encompasses almost all of our backyard.

Husband came out and said, "you look sad, disraught, and depressed." And I said, "I am." And he said, "Why?"

And I said, "I don't know. This makes me sad, but, that's not all of it."

And Husband said, "Well, of course, THIS is sad. This is worse than taking down the Christmas tree." (I know, I'm repeating a theme, here.)

And then I said, "It's weird, by the time we open the pool again in May, we won't be a family of three anymore...we'll be four." And Husband said, "that should make you happy, not sad." "True that." I said. "But, right now, it all seems so unreal. What if she hates to swim? And I don't want to cover the pool. I want to live somewhere warm where we don't have to cover the pool half the year."

Yes, I know that makes no sense, especially considering the only places I've ever expressed a desire to move to are Montreal and Chicago. Neither of which are warm enough for year round pools - honestly, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an outdoor pool ANYWHERE in Montreal. So, it made no sense for me to say that. Also, it's not like I could pluck our home and pool out of the ground and put it down in Arizona or New Mexico. And I've LIVED in Tucson, Arizona, and it is unbelievably HOT there, in the summer. And part of spring. And part of fall. It's HOT. Like, 109 degrees. Really really mind-bendingly hot is what I am saying. I don't really want to move back there. (Although, I did LIKE living there, at the time. It's a nice city. Just, you know, HOT.)

So, I was unreasonably sad and melancholy while we blew water out of the lines, and filled the lines with pool safe antifreeze, and capped and plugged and shocked and poured in winter algaecide (which stinks to high heaven), and finally pulled the safety cover over the top and secured it with 4o some odd springs, so, it now looks like I have a strange green and black tennis court in my back yard.

The weekend was otherwise okay. Saturday evening we spent with a family we met through FCC, who have a biological daughter the same age age Gabriel, and a daughter adopted from China who is 6 months younger than Lana. They have been home with her about a year, and we had a really nice evening with them, making pizza and chatting, and laughing about a very funny story about how they managed to get a gigantic stringed instrument (I would say this instrument is twice as long as a guitar, and about as wide) home from China.

Not much else to report,
LM