Feeling Domestic & Fallish, Musings on a New Year, Etc.

I saw this last year on Facebook and grabbed a shot of it. It is so true to me.

Sometimes I just feel like being domestic and not working. I love my work. I work a great deal and find it meaningful. But once in a while, I'm totally distracted by what I want to do at home. I love our home, I love being home, and I love making it homey. This feeling pretty much always comes after a busy work time, but sometimes it hits me at other times. Yes, I work from home, but that does not mean that my time is my own. It is quite the contrary, actually. Many find this surprising. But it's really not. Clients, other attorneys I work with, and even opposing counsel dictate my schedule almost daily. Things pile up and I'm happy to have a break from one part of my life to see to the other. There are the necessary things of life that need to be done, but then there are the fun things as well. 

Today is one of those days where I feel not just domestic, but fall is calling me. It's still hot here - these are the dog days in Dallas. It's actually been worse at this time of year, but we've also had early cool fronts pop in as well some years. Not right now, though. It's going to be in the low 100s today with a heat index exceeding that given the humidity. But I am undaunted. It's beginning to feel like fall and I am in the mood for fall cleaning, decorating, baking, and engaging in those little things that we try to do each year and maybe adding a new thing or two. 

The light is changing and so are the shadows. My mother taught me to pay attention to these things. I grew up in the country and spent a great deal of time outdoors. I noticed this especially last evening as Toby and I were driving to Vigil. When Toby and I first met, he had no idea what I was talking about. It took him years to see it. Now he does. Regardless of when the cooler air arrives, the shadows and light change when they will. I love that. That's my cue....along with the black birds when they start lining up en masse on power lines. 

We have a special wreath we purchased at Williams Sonoma a few years ago. The first time we see black birds lined up that way in sufficient numbers, we put it up. 

It's often our first decoration for fall (or really for the season we've made up "Late Summer")...but not this year. This year, I bought this throw pillow and it came in today. I put it on the couch already. 

I also bought some scented fall candles today. 

This year I am anticipating fall more than ever. Last year, as Toby noted, was a bust for a number of reasons. Weather was one of them. This year, we feel like we need to make up for that. I hope everything cooperates with us. 

We have decided that we will decorate for fall on September 1. That is, after all, the beginning of meteorological fall. Years ago I discovered the meteorological seasons. They make more sense to me, actually. I follow them in terms of our decorating. We'll transition from more general fall decorations to Halloween to Thanksgiving (I have a growing turkey collection which I started a few years ago as I think Thanksgiving is the great under-appreciated season, it's treated as the "day before Christmas shopping begins" and I hate that, but more on that in another post) then work our way to a sort of Advent and Christmas. (Orthodoxy doesn't really do Advent and our Christmas is in January, but we still celebrate what we've come to call "Santa Christmas" with our non-Orthodox family on December 25. I don't put up a tree early and we never have. We generally wait until about December 20 or so. But what do you do in the meantime? After Thanksgiving it's really time to put those colors away. A few years ago, I started putting up wintery greenery with different shades of green and white and then gradually add the more obvious Christmas reds to it. But more on that in time.)

It's only August 19 so we have a bit of time before we pull out our glorious pumpkins and all that. In the interim, we're doing some of our Late Summer stuff. We love Hatch chiles and we've declared that a season here when they start appearing at stores. (Tonight, in fact, since it's a Fish Day (it's the Transfiguration) during our Dormition Fast, I'm making a dish (that I've totally made up) with cod and Hatch chiles. Perhaps I'll post about that later.) We're also doing some pretty significant fall cleaning and re-organizing bit by bit for the new school year and in anticipation of fall. I'm even wanting to do a fall spruce up of the yard. Normally we do that in the spring, but we did much less of that this year due to rain and other things. Perhaps we can do that now. Seems appropriate with the many holidays coming our way. 

In a way, fall has always felt like a new year to me. I was public schooled and loved school...the academics of it at least. I was excited every year for it to begin. Like the secular calendar new year, it's a time of hopes and the promise of what can be. A new chance. New opportunities. Even as homeschoolers we roughly follow that schedule. I'm excited each year. Work also picks up in the fall after usually being more sluggish in the summer by comparison. People take vacations, routines are disrupted. Things return to a new normal each fall and we settle into a new routine.

Last year, we started attending our Orthodox parish the first weekend of September. At the time, we thought we were told that was the Church's new year (I now think we misunderstood and that it was the new year for Sunday School). There is the calendar difference. It is September 1 on the Julian Calendar which the Russian Orthodox follow, which is September 14 on secular / Gregorian calendars. It's very confusing to me still. Nevertheless, it was particularly meaningful to us that this is when we Providentially started attending and their (now, our) new year is right at the beginning of fall. 

Toby told me that the Romans considered fall and the harvest time to be the new year. That makes sense to me. He wondered if that is why Orthodoxy begins its ecclesiastical (liturgical) year at that time. As it turns out, yes, but also because of this. It also turns out that there is a tradition of blessing the "first fruits" after the Divine Liturgy for the Transfiguration which is today. Grapes are traditional, but in Russia, they do apples because those are ripe first. As I learn more of the details, there are little things like this that just make Orthodoxy a better "fit" for me - among many, many other things....

So, here's to a new year that will be upon us very soon. Let's make the most of it! 

Thanks for reading! 

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