So done with September

 Admit it. September was one discouraging month. I even made a deal with the calendar. If today was October, I would clean the big bathroom. It was and I did.

I am numbed. Life was not always measured out in teaspoons. Finding spontaneity in four walls is not possible, even for the cat. Even his dead run of sixty feet has the same obstacles to avoid. He has regressed to treating me as if he's my dog. 

The children around me are back in school. I read in the paper of schools all around closing their doors, but the two private academies have full parking lots. I used to remember to avoid the road they both occupy, from one cross road to another, when the School Zone lights would be blinking. 

I don't remember that, now. I amused myself with pictures on my way through the four way stop. 

My letter to the people was published in the last issue of YCN. Be sure your vote is counted. If you don't vote, you don't count. Stark, and true.

Life within four walls--groan. After I watch the cat bound, end to end, until he just flops, little remains. Sometimes I cook, even two or three days in a row. I made cauliflower soup the other day. So good, especially with some Swiss cheese and bacon crumbles. Two or three days are stashed in the freezer. Well labelled.

Another keeper is the bruschetta spaghetti. As a not Italian, I've deduced the meaning of "bruschetta" in front of spaghetti. I take it to mean "raw", as in spaghetti from scratch. The noodles wind up coated in red sauce, and are red, and not from a separate pan, or from a can of sauce.

Other people in my world are alive and well. Just not "in". Laura is rooming with Kamaria and sharing her life. It includes bicycling and veganism. Nothing with eyes, I think. Kamaria sent a picture labelled "Back from a six mile bike ride and Laura went up the apple tree!".

Speaking of trees, and other women in my family, Beth has sent pictures from time to time of the progress of the pergola in her back yard. The pergola has been a plan of hers for some time, and life fitted together this year to get it done.

First, the old pear tree in her back yard gasped its last pear last year. The tree was there when she moved in, and that was while her G'ma Lytle was here to admire her house and her accomplishment. Past that, let's just say her children were raised on pear sauce.

Several years ago she and the children laid a patio under the tree, and entertaining moved there. A few more years of shade from the tree, and then it was gone.

Over the course of this summer I received snaps. This is dated August 30th:

A couple of weeks later:

Progress. More stepladders called into service. And Saturday my phone went nutz with a flurry of pergola pictures.

I will save the close ups of the overhead screening and struts and uprights for a really slow day. Here we have Beth's husband, Bill, her college roommate, John (also the primary builder), and the pergola.

And the author of the event? Since the men aren't available to make a picture, wait a bit. Beth's chair is the red chair.