Fall Chill

Oh boy. I am superwaybehind on blogging this fall. You know that feeling? Like an awkward pause in a conversation, where so much time has gone by, and you finally think of something to say, but don't say it because all of a sudden it doesn't seem like the right moment anymore. Maybe that's just me.

Anyways, blogging has been a struggle this fall. There are so many things to do that blogging just hasn't happened. It's not that I'm not writing. I am. On paper. And it's not that I'm not thinking about what ought to go up on the blog. I am. It's just that by the time I get home, all I want is a glass of wine, dinner, a book to curl up with, and a cuddle with Mike or Odie or both.

Plus, there's this weird pressure for blogging to be in real time. Maybe you know it. Things ought to feel relevant when they're published. But it's hard to devote so much time to blogging itself - the pictures, the writing, the scheduling of posts, and then find out that the government has shut down and the world gone to pot and your post suddenly seems out of place. You could let it publish anyways, or you could go back and re-write it. Usually I opt for the first option, if only because I don't remember whether I've scheduled a post or not. So it goes.

More than a month ago, Mike and I took Odie on a hike. I have no idea where we were, except that it was pretty far away from where we usually hike. And it was a National Forest...something that was wide open to the public a month ago, but not at all the last couple of days.

We stopped at a grocery store and picked up supplies for a picnic lunch - chips, cheese, salami, chocolate covered bananas, gluten-free cookies, ginger ale - the works. We were high in the mountains, so where it was still ninety degrees where we live, it was crisp and cool like fall. Like it feels now.

I had injured my foot earlier in the summer, which really put a stop to most of our hiking this summer. But Mike had identified several easy hikes that we could try. Best of all, there were lakes. We wanted to see how Odie would do around water.

Being the fearless little guy he is, when Mike threw a stick in the lake, Odie jumped right in after it, got it, and brought it back.

He loved playing in the water, chasing sticks, and pawing at the water to make it splash up into his face.

Best of all (to him) was shaking all that lake water all over us!

Even when he started shivering, he didn't want to stop.

Since the humans were chilly too, it wasn't a terribly long hike. But we all enjoyed ourselves.