Arbitrary Housewife

This fall has not turned out as I planned.

First of all, it was hot almost all the way to the end of October. So in fact, it did not feel like fall. It felt like a global warming nightmare: summer, summer, all year long. Now, if you live in Florida, then, hey, no big deal. But here in North Carolina, in the heart of the lovely southeast corridor, you expect fall and winter and spring. We are not Louisiana. We are not Corpus Christi, Texas. We are North Carolina, and Halloween should be brisk.

So, it's been hot. And on top of the heat, there were the above-mentioned global warming fears. Ten years ago, the heat would make you moan and groan. Now it makes you moan and groan and feel guilty every time you fire up the car.

Plus: drought. We're in the middle of a big one here. They say my city has about seventy days of water left. The drought might just be drought, or it might be the result of too much development and, yes, our old friend global warming. So on top of whatever guilt I might be feeling about my excess carbon emissions, now I get to feel guilty for any use of water that might be deemed as excessive, including rinsing dishes and showering longer than three minutes.

All this said, it's hard to work myself up into my usual Autumnal state, which involves feeling vaguely nostalgic for my childhood and the strong desire to can something. It also usually involves a lot of knitting and domestic joie d vivre. But who wants to knit when it's 86 degrees in October?

Cool weather makes me straighten up and fly right. I get things in order. I make lists. Hot weather, particularly out of season, makes me feel schlubby. I don't exactly know what schlubby means, but I know what it feels like. Lethargic. Mildly depressed. Uninterested in canning (which, by the way, I have no idea how to do and nothing to do it with), cooking, baking or other housewifely pursuits. I do housework in unseasonably hot weather, but with no sense of mission.

Now, we have had a couple weeks of moderately cool weather, so I'm hoping things are looking up. I'm also hoping for rain, though none seems to be on the horizon. And I'm definitely hoping my friends who pooh-pooh global warming as a myth and a sham are right. I don't think they are, but a girl can dream.

Now, on a complete tangent ... Jack and Will have been getting along lately. Not all the time, mind you, but for the last month or so they've been tolerating one another reasonably well and sometimes actually just hanging out. Two weeks ago we finally got the matching twin bed for Jack's room, and now every night Will sleeps in Jack's room. I'm actually tempted to make them share a room, but we don't really need Will's room to be anything other than Will's room (thank goodness for walk-in attic space), and I don't want to start any rebellions. But I think it's good they're pseudo-sharing Jack's room. I don't even yell at them (much) for chattering into the night. I'm happy to hear them talk to each other and have fun.

Complete different tangent: Went to Linens 'n' Things for some hand towels today. When I got to the checkout line, there were two people ahead of me with relatively small purchases. The checkout clerk looked slightly, well, not bright. The first transaction took five minutes (should've taken about thirty seconds). The second took approximately two years. At the end of Year Two, when it was clear we would be heading into Year Three, I abandoned ship. Just lay the towels down and walked out the door.

It could be argued that I had been standing in line for almost two years and five minutes, why not wait a couple of more months? But you just get to a point where you can't wait any more. Where incompetence can no longer be tolerated. Where you don't trust yourself to be civil when it's finally your turn. Also, I'd heard the clerk ask the woman in front of me for her phone number at the beginning of the transaction, and I had yet to come up with a polite way to say, "Hell, no, I'm not telling you my phone number. Zip code, what the hey. But if you want my phone number, you can look it up your own damn self."

So I left. And I may never, ever go back.