Fall has arrived. The mornings are cold. The air is fresh and crisp, and the nights flirt with 32 degrees regularly now. 

The sky was brilliant today, a perfect mixture of clear blue with clouds like pillows, floating past gently in the breezes that stirred up during each hour. 

The leaves are mostly gone, but a few swirl in a dance that goes nowhere and then settle in edges and cracks along the playground and parking lot at the school. The children wear hoods and gloves because the warmth of the sun doesn’t penetrate so efficiently now with winter around the corner. 

I snapped this photo late in the afternoon today. It seemed to embrace the essence of “fall” with the colors and cleanness and long shadows. 

  
The green of summer still hangs on, grasping for a few more days, a few more hours, before a hard freeze paralyzes the vibrant color and forces the soft grasses into a long sleep, and the delicate flakes cover the ground with a blanket of snow. 

Change is about to come. A change in the weather. A change in the scenery. And a change is happening inside as well.  

 

This meme speaks a truth that few ever own. What could be better than living a life that brings you joy daily, and one you don’t need a vacation from?  Is it possible to have peace amidst the daily schedules and surroundings?  This sounds like a very appealing life, and while it may take a few years, I am working to get there. 

I’ve been caught up in the Marie Kondo movement. I’ve read her book. I’ve done my clothes. That’s as far as I got. I expect that I will continue, but things may not happen in the “correct” order. 

I found myself with an hour to kill today. I can thank the fact that our kitchen clock seems to have missed the memo about “falling back” a few weeks ago, and all the humans that live here have not noticed the incorrect time until today, after it was too late.  

So I spent my hour deleting emails. Yes, I did that for a whole hour and managed to delete THOUSANDS  of them. There are still thousands more to go. I worked in topics. Facebook. Bunkbeds & Betties. Erin Condren. Flylady Flybabies. EC Fans Gone Wild. These are all Facebook related. I had my settings set up so I would receive an email notification for every last thing that happened on FB. While I dedicated an email account exclusively to this purpose, there was a LOT of stress caused by seeing over 60K in that little red email bubble on my phone. Yes, you read that correctly. OVER 60,000!!  So I deleted and deleted and deleted, select all, after select all, after select all. Nothing felt better than removing all the negativity from the last mentioned group, and all those names that contributed to the stress from that group. It’s all gone now, and there is a sense of relief and lightness. 

Etsy, Little Passports, Michaels, Bank of America, and Alaska Airlines are a few more topics I attacked in my email “inbox zero” quest today.  I look forward to the next chunk of time I can dedicate to deleting more emails and simplifying my life and finding peace without needing a vacation. 

   
 

Something fun I did today was getting photos of these precious puppies!  They are all 3 weeks old and touching their squishy faces and hearing their scolding little growls ranked this day as one of the finest in the past few weeks. 

Happy Fall to all of you. Thanks for stopping by!