Hello, Fall!

Last night I woke up cold and had to get another blanket to warm back up with.  When I pulled the curtains this morning, I was greeted with a grey sky and light sprinkles.  During church this morning, it started raining and is still raining this evening.  I pulled out pants and a long-sleeved shirt when I dressed after coming home from church this afternoon.  The weather forecast calls for cloudy weather and rain for the next two days, and after that the high temperature will barely break seventy on one day in the next ten.

It looks like fall just arrived.

Last week the weather was sunny and in the low eighties.  Yesterday we went to the park and it was seventy-five and sunny, the perfect day for the park.  I've been having a hard time believing that it's actually October as I've worn a dress or shorts every day, the same thing I've worn every day since we moved to Tashkent.  I knew logically that one day the weather would cool down and I would have to find out where I put my jeans, but it didn't feel like that would be any time soon.

Our house is heated by radiators, and in the bathrooms, kitchen, and basement, by radiant flooring.  Since the weather has been nice, although chilly at night, we haven't had the radiators turned on yet.  Timing the radiators is tricky business sometimes - turn them on too early and you end up sweltering, but wait too long and you can have some miserable days waiting for someone from the embassy to come and turn them on for you.  This year I'm going to watch so that I have the power to turn them on and off myself.  

My general rule is that when the high temperatures drop below seventy-five, I have the radiators switched on.  Our house is an enormous concrete block, which makes it easier to cool in the summer as the concrete tends to stay cool, but that doesn't work as well in the fall and spring.  So this week, the radiators are getting turned on.  And if we're hot, then we can open the windows.

The trees have also started changing this week.  They've stayed stubbornly green and then one day they must have all agreed that it was time for fall because they all turned at once.  As we drove to church this morning, the wind was whipping leaves through the grey skies.  It was very fall-y and I wanted to go home and make pumpkin bread.

I've always had a complicated relationship with fall because it's the season that ushers in winter.  I don't like being cold, I don't like the sun setting at five in the evening, I don't like bare skeleton trees, and I don't like taking twenty minutes to get my children out of the house while angrily looking for that one lost mitten that someone didn't put back in their bin.  

So although fall has some lovely, crisp days, that make for perfect walks along picturesque rivers, I have a hard time enjoying them as I brace for grey, cold winter.  But there are people in my family who like fall very much and so I'll try not to ruin it for them.  They are very excited about the fire pit that we got this week and everyone is looking forward to roasting marshmallows and making s'mores.

But I guess it doesn't really matter how I feel about fall because it comes every year (well, not in the tropics) whether I want it to or not.  I'll try my best to enjoy it.  And then eagerly look forward to spring.