locking the door on summer

Let me just tell you about my morning, spent at a river trail park walking the dog. Normally at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning, it is quiet, palely-lit, full of empty space and shade, but today the weather, the hint of fall in it is getting to people, and the trail was packed. Three miles and there were trees on one side and the sluggish, shallow river on the other with a train track and a rolling hillside covered with kudzu and graves beyond that, and as busy as it was, walkers and dogs and babies and joggers and cyclists and skaters all jostling together in this polite contradance, everyone was smiling, everyone was happy to be there, and I was too.

Today I had one of those mornings where all the anxieties and the rough edges smooth away and what I am left with is this conviction that it is a lucky thing to be alive in this world, and it's stuck with me long enough that even though the dog has just puked on the couch (why do dogs insist on finding the hardest thing in the room to clean? Thank fuck for slipcovers, people of the world), I am still in an alarmingly good mood.