Autumn

Fall has come to the desert. We don't get colorful leaves, although some of the trees here are deciduous and, because of the decreasing hours of daylight, have dropped their leaves. We do get pumpkins and Halloween decorations everywhere. Our school's Fall Festival is coming up next Friday, wherein we teachers all supervise the carnival games and paint faces and sell hot dogs. But it's really pretty fun, and the older students come back with their younger siblings and so it's like a reunion.

The next indicator that fall has officially arrived is the temperature. It only gets up to 85 during the days now, and in the early morning, when I first leave for work, it is actually in the 60's. The pool season is officially finished. The water is just too chilly for even me. I've been known to jump into the ocean when it was really cold, but I'm probably too chicken to do that now. These days, we just use the hot tub. Every evening, we go out there and enjoy it under the starry sky. (No really, we can see quite a few stars since we're situated next to a large mountain and beyond it is the open desert). It's always nice to soak for a little while before heading into bed.

But, the real proof that autumn has arrived is this:

Some of my students are now wearing their coats to school. Yes, a coat, with a fur-lined hood. After all, it isn't 95 degrees at 8:00 A.M. any longer, so it must be coat weather, right?  I can understand a sweater, or a light jacket...but, seriously? My students crack me up. They're so weather-warped living here.

We will actually have a few days that will require a coat. A couple of times each winter since I've moved here, it was quite cold. A few times the temperature hovered in the low forties for several days. It has dipped below freezing every year during the winter. I'll go outside and there will be a layer (a mighty thin layer) of ice across the pool and spa. So, yes, I own a coat and I occasionally wear it. And, if I were a youngster walking to school for 15 or 20 minutes, I'd probably wear my coat more often. But, Sweetie-who-wore-it-this-week, I think you can hold off for a few more weeks.

Maybe she bought it over the weekend, and it was new, so she just couldn't resist. Me? I wore Capris again.