A Time to Every Purpose, Heaven or No

It’s coming up on that time of year.

No, not Christmas, despite the rumored store displays. Fortunately I haven’t been to a Target or like store recently, so I haven’t been bombarded yet. I’m a strict holiday-orderist (yes, I just made that up). All holidays in their proper order. No Christmas activity of any kind until after Thanksgiving. No Thanksgiving discussions until after Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead.

Part of moving to a new place is learning the new rhythms.

It’s been odd to me that I haven’t wanted to get the Halloween decs out yet. Some of that is where my focus is, on finishing this revision. I haven’t done a number of things I normally spend my time doing. And being out of my normal patterns, feeling like this is a vacation house and not my usual life at all.

But a huge part of it is the weather, too. The leaves are starting to turn on a few trees now, but we haven’t hard a hard freeze. Certainly no snow. David and I are out on the patio in the evenings, having cocktails and watching the sunset, which would just NOT have happened in Laramie.

So, part of me — the Denver girl who had to wear a parka over her hula dancer costume one year (I wised up and picked WARM costumes after that) and the Laramie girl who associates high chilled winds whipping dead leaves around with Halloween — thinks it’s still summertime. After all, the flowers are still blooming.

But now I’m starting to feel it. Like a whisper in the air. The veil is thinning. The restless dead are teeming in the wings.

The coyotes yipping at night could be the first yelps of the Hunt.