Seasons Turning

I know it’s only the middle of August, but the signs are already appearing of a season’s end. As I write this, it is still pitch black outside, and our bright early mornings have passed for another year. The weatherman said yesterday that we are losing 3 minutes of daylight every day right now. It’s also cooler – when I pull up the ten day forecast, six out of the ten days are going to have highs between 75 and 78.

 

There are other signs too – back to school commercials are abundant these days, and when we were at my sister’s a few days ago, the counter was piled high with all those new school supplies that are going to be used over the next few months. I haven’t seen any trees turning yet, but I bet we will when we head to the Adirondacks on Saturday. Slowly we are heading toward the boundary between late summer and early fall.

 

Usually when we get to this point, my emotions are mixed with a brisk anticipation (because I love all the rituals of autumn) and dread (because I’m not looking forward to another long winter). This year there’s also a lot of excitement floating around in the mix…the excitement of plans fulfilled and also the excitement of unanswered questions.

 

Whether the house sells quickly or not, which of course we hope it will, at least we are going to be done with our projects. By the end of August, we plan to have everything except the big furniture cleaned out of this house. We are almost at that point already, but we do have some small odds and ends still hanging around. So even if our house takes a while to go, at the very least we will be able to enjoy our weekends and not have to be cleaning and sorting every spare moment.

But then there is the excitement of the unknown…will our house sell quickly…will we get some good offers…will we have to use our Plan B and commute from a campground…and the most exciting, our hope…will we be able to head south on January 8th with our house sold? (If our house hasn’t sold, we will stay until it does because I can’t leave work until the house is gone.)

But for now, we will not think about that…we know it’s a possibility…but we prefer to hope for the best and dream of the open road.

So many countdowns…I couldn’t decide which one to use…my two favorites - 4 days until we leave for our trip to Peru…26 days until our house goes on sale.