A west country girl with a big fat cat that looks into her eyes of green

Today marks four months since I drove a jeep full of plants and two miserable cats down the long road to Baltimore. I think the cats have finally more or less recovered, though the plants have been less resilient. And me? Well... that's more complicated. I miss home. I was in one of the most amazing areas for over a decade. But I needed to move on, move away, get away from the ghosts of the past and the familiar places so patinated with memories as to be petrified. Most days I think I took the right job. I like being closer to the coast and New York and DC, but I'm not sure that Baltimore is the city for me. The jury's still out on that. But I can always move. In fact, I think I will in the not too terribly distant future.

I've now worn my wool coat and scraped frost-- actual frost-- from my windshield two mornings in a row. I also wore non-khaki type pants today for the first time since wearing a suit during orientation. Woe. I'm not quite ready for it to be winter just yet. Though the summer was long and painfully hot (literally when sitting on seats that have baked in 105 degree heat all day), I feel like I missed something. Perhaps because fall has felt so short. Labor day came, but it was marked only by the closing of the complex's pool and the appearance of children waiting for buses in the morning. It remained unseasonably warm-- to me, anyway. True, I was born & bred a northerner and all, but it's not THAT far south of the Mason-Dixon line here. And then a few short weeks, not even a full month, of what I consider fall, and then BAM! We're into winter now.

Granted, this would be the beginning of the rainy season back home. November means perpetually leaden skies spitting icy rain that soaks through your hair and coat. It means trudging from a too-cold office to a coffee shop or noodle place with windows heavy with condensation to a tiny apartment where the radiator clanks and hisses all night while sleet ticks against the window. It's a fantastically cold and lonely time of year, even if you're paired up. Pairing up this time of year is really a desperate charade with the end game of keeping warm. Oooh, listen to moody, cynical me.

Which is probably why I'm in a Nick Cave listening mood lately. And doing my best PJ Harvey. Come take him by his lily-white hands, come take him by his feet.