Look, I don’t want to say this too loudly or anything, for fear of jinxing it, but it’s starting to feel like fall might actually be here. The high temperature today is a mere 70 degrees. That’s about 20 degrees cooler than it was just a couple of weeks ago, when we had “feels like” temperatures in the triple digits. It’s truly a sign of how long I’ve been living in the deep south that 70 degrees feels cool to me. 

At any rate, our porch is decked out with gourds and mums and even a five-foot-tall plastic skeleton that my daughter has named Sally Rose. The children’s Halloween costumes are ready and waiting in their closets. I made a batch of pumpkin muffins on Sunday and we have a giant bowl of apples sitting on the kitchen counter. I got lowlights in my hair and I’m wearing boots at work today. Things are good. 

The first sense of cooler weather is always such a relief around here: I finally feel like perhaps everything will not actually be terrible and sticky and sweaty forever; that perhaps hope is on the horizon.

Take as a contrast, for example, the other morning, when I was standing in the kitchen still in my pajamas trying to do an “Elsa Braid” in the hair of a squirmy 3.8-year-old child. For some reason, the combination of hot coffee and a hot breakfast and the hot chandelier that hangs over our kitchen table* always gives me a serious case of the morning sweats. And that, in turn, makes me incredibly panicky and hopeless and full of sad resignation. Or maybe it’s perimenopause, who can say?

So anyway, there I was that morning struggling through my second attempt at the braiding thing and the child was squirming and complaining and it was… just…so…hot that I dramatically ripped off my long-sleeved pajama top and stomped into the bedroom for a tank top before I could resume the task at hand. Life is hard. But perhaps relief is in sight.

*Yes, fine, we should update the light bulbs and raise the chandelier to a more appropriate height for adult humans. I have no idea why it hangs as low as it does but I do know that if I am standing up and reaching across the table I should probably not be hitting my head on a light fixture, especially one that emits approximately the same amount of light and heat as the sun does. Let’s agree not to talk about why I insist on sleeping in long sleeves and drinking hot coffee in the morning.