summer’s last gasp

You wouldn’t think today’s forecast is what it is based on this picture taken just last week. Summer is trying its very best to hold on. Last week brought rain… LOTS of rain and cooler temperatures. This week is sun… LOTS of sun and summer like temperatures. Don’t all of you rush off to look at your weather app forecasts for the Portland area. I’ll just tell you – it’s supposed to hit 83 today.

Also, don’t all of you roll your eyes and call me a snowflake. 83 is summer weather to someone in this area. Our 90 is my 108 from years ago. It’s all relative.

I posted the picture above to instagram as a nod to the season changing… changing to one of my favorite parts of living in Oregon. Rain coats and boots… they are my sweater weather. Aside from this week, once that rain settles back in again, it’s rain coats and boots until May or so. I really don’t have to worry too much about what’s under that rain coat because the coat likely won’t come off. There is some comfort in this. Good thing too, I really don’t have a ton of cool/cold weather shirts that are worth showing off… but my jeans and boots are on point.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the changing of seasons. And if you’re keeping up, you know I just wrote about it a couple of posts ago. It was so easy to celebrate the seasons when things were old normal. Now the celebrations are much more personal. I’m not sharing a laugh over a hot spiked cider at a cozy bar out on the coast after a day of agate hunting, we aren’t celebrating a successful hike through the rain under the dim light and loud murmur at our favorite brewery, we aren’t breezing through a pumpkin patch and corn maze while I try my hardest to hold my cup of coffee in such a way to show off my latest knit hand warmers. We aren’t doing those things this year.

At best I’ll post a picture of my homemade spiked cider in front of our duraflame fire (this house came with a fire place but the insert is far to small for anything more than a duraflame log so please don’t make that face), or perhaps we’ll celebrate a hike over a beer pulled straight from our fridge or I’ll try my best to show off those handwarmers while using the self checkout at the store to buy a fall pumpkin. It isn’t the same but it’s not the worst. The changing of the season will be celebrated in one way or another.

My hope is that these small celebrations bring more joy to each day. Packing my day full of things that make me smile, even if planned and intentional, will push out the rest. The nightmares/stressful dreams continue almost nightly and I hope to get rid of those almost completely. Last night’s involved me having to detonate dynamite in the garage of a house full of people I loved and cared about. My mom was in the house… she pops up in my dreams on occassion… usually in ways where I can’t save her.

It’s the worst way for your dead mother to show up in dreams. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just trust me.

I don’t think the dynamite ended up hurting anyone and if I recall, everyone’s belongings in the garage were fine except mine. There were a lot of backpacks with things that belonged to others that while singed, survived. However, all of my keep sakes, memories and piano music books (not sure of the significance of that other than it came up last night… note about that below) disintegrated in the explosion. Not even ashes were left. I kept looking for my plastic totes full of things, but I couldn’t find them.

I woke up well before my husband’s alarm went off so relieved it was a dream.

Funny thing is, I don’t have a lot of keep sakes in the garage in real life. We purged so much of that kind of thing a couple of years ago in a big life cleansing sweep and I don’t think about that often… not sure why that sense of loss came up so heavily in my sleep.

The heaviness of these nightmares weigh on me during the first few hours of the day… then they fade, as dreams do. Thankfully they don’t set my day in motion, but they are frustrating all the same.

And so that note about the piano music – we’re making it through Community on Netflix (always late to the TV show party over here). In the final season there is an episode based loosely around the movie The Sting. The episode feathers ragtime piano music (similar to “The Maple Leaf Rag”) similar to the movie. I reminisced about how I used to play that kind of music in high school… but now my piano sits unused. I’m guessing that crept into my dream somehow.

Maybe I should add piano playing back into my rotation. Could be good for my soul.