It's time to say the F-word.

I've been avoiding it all summer. I've noticed that people talk about preparing for winter, but they don't talk about fall. I know I've been trying not to think about it and refusing to say the word. But that's it. I just can't hold on to my delusions anymore. I have to admit that it is fall. In fact, it was fall already last weekend. I should have taken the hint when the flowers on my chrysanthemum plant succumbed to frost, but I let that slide. I neglected to acknowledge the autumnal equinox. I pretended not to notice that the leaves were changing color. This morning there was frost everywhere. I even had to scrape my car. That was the last straw. Fall has fallen.

My husband got back from Phoenix yesterday, where it was 108 F (42 C). Here it was sunny and clear but windy and only 50 F (10 C). The cement floor has been replaced in the front room, but the radiator system still can't be hooked up. I've been having fires in the bedroom fireplace almost every evening, and I've changed to the winter weight bedding. It's time to put away the summer clothes and get out the winter clothes. Every day it gets darker and colder, and while the weather's really quite nice (like a crisp and clear winter day in California) I can feel it getting me down.

Updates

Tomorrow I have a wedding to photograph--the last one of the four I had booked for this summer. Fortunately I also had some other small jobs in between. My husband is in the US on a business trip, so his mother is watching our daughter for the weekend.

When I got home from dropping her off this evening, I found our driveway, courtyard, and front yard full of cows. They looked at my car but were not impressed. As I called the farmer from my car, they eventually stepped out of my way enough that I could park the car. The farmer drove up, and about half of the cows followed him back towards their pasture. The rest of the cows were busy sucking plums off the plum tree and couldn't be bothered with anything else. It's hard to describe what that sounded like, but I'll never forget it. I went out with a flashlight and tried to get them to move along. I clapped, I stomped, I gestured like I was directing traffic. The cows gave me the evil eye and went back to the plums. "Mooooooooove," I said. The cows mooed back. I don't speak cow, but I don't think they were kind words. "Mooooooooove!" I repeated, and they did. I'm sure it helped that the farmer was also calling them.

In other news, my pantry is still free from meal worms--thank goodness! Violin lessons are going okay. My fingers seem to remember what to do, but my brain doesn't remember much more than scales. I'll have to dig through some of those boxes that we never unpacked and see if I still have any of my sheet music. My husband's contract was renewed for another year. Last Friday, some workmen came to jackhammer up the floor in the front room where the radiator pipe was leaking. They were supposed to come and pour new cement this week, but (no surprise) that didn't happen. Hopefully it will get done soon, because it's getting really cold at night. The days are still pretty nice. I will not tempt fate by saying the F-word, but the leaves are starting to turn. I have decided that summer will last through September. I'm not in denial, but I have to go now and put more wood in the fireplace.

Choosing the lesser of two weevils

Unlike that great scene in Master and Commander, the weevils were not on a plate, they were in my pantry. And actually they weren't even weevils, they were meal worms. Frankly I would have chosen the weevils. I had weevils once in my pantry in San Diego, and they weren't anywhere near as disgusting. They were also relatively easy to get rid of.

I discovered on Sunday, as I was getting ready for guests to arrive, that the sprinkling of flour beside the bag of dark bread-flour that I hadn't used since winter was not caused by a scratch in the paper bag. Ewww, bummer, I thought and shoved everything back in place.

On Monday, I began cleaning the pantry. This was a significant task because I've become quite the food hoarder. I justify this in that while there's a small grocery store in the local town, I'm 20 minutes away from a real supermarket, and with gas at $6 per gallon, you don't just run to the supermarket for one item.

I threw out a lot of stuff: the infested bag of flour and those that were adjacent to it on the shelf, open grain products, and a few things I found that had been in there entirely too long. Each item remaining in the pantry was thoroughly inspected: under the rims on cans, in the joints of cardboard boxes, under the flaps of folded plastic, inside the small paper booklet hanging from a bottle, inside the layers of rolled up mylar from a half eaten bag of chips.... Those disgusting meal worms had found their way into all sorts of places. Everything packaged in cardboard, paper, or thin plastic got bagged. This pretty much wiped out my collection of hand-imported ziplock freezer/storage bags, but I was so glad I had them. They've finally started selling ziplock bags here, but only the quart/liter size, and they're expensive (no Costco-packs).

But my battle wasn't over. I wiped down the shelves with alcohol to disinfect, but the meal worms had crawled into the holes that are pre-drilled in all IKEA furniture which allow one to adjust the position of the shelves. There they had made cocoons, and I fear, laid eggs. Q-tips do not fit into these holes, not even the hard Swedish variety with not enough cotton on them. Toothpicks fit, but they were not particularly effective, and the results really turned my stomach. My solution: I took a syringe and squirted ~1 ml alcohol in each hole, then I took the appropriate sized drill bit and by hand (not on the drill, less I drill through the walls of the cabinet) reamed out each hole. The inhabitants got thoroughly mashed, and any eggs got scraped up in the grooves of the drill bit which I would rinse off between each hole so as to not cross-contaminate.

It took me two days to finish this process, but I now have a neat and tidy pantry, a good idea of what's in it, $ 20 in coupons from the flour manufacturer whom I called and complained to, and the faint odor of alcohol which reminds me of the labs I used to work in. I find the smell clean and somewhat reassuring. Unfortunately my husband hates this smell, but then he doesn't spend much time in the kitchen anyhow. So far, no new signs of meal worms or other creepy crawlies. Let's hope this worked.

To Margaret Ann Cole with love Uncle Lloyd

That's what was written on the inside of my violin. I always thought it was very special because it was hand made even if it really wasn't the world's greatest instrument. I started playing the violin in third grade, but I don't remember when my parents bought me this violin. I know I had it with me to summer camp which started for me the summer after seventh grade and continued every summer through high school.

I stopped playing the violin regularly after high school. I wasn't good enough to play in the La Jolla Symphony, and I wasn't dedicated enough to play in college (where you didn't have to be a music major, but you did have to take a music theory class that was 5 days a week at 8 AM--not compatible with either my academic schedule or my sleep schedule.) By the time we moved to Sweden, I hadn't played in about 10 years. I didn't have time to deal with selling it, so I gave it back to my mom to sell.

Now I wonder whatever became of it. Who has it now? Did it get refinished, or does it still have the melt marks in the varnish from when it accidentally got left in the sun at summer camp?

This has been on my mind because today I rented two violins: one for me, and a 1/4 sized one for my daughter. She started music lessons last week and is really excited about playing the violin. I hope she's not too disappointed to discover that it's not easy to fiddle and dance at the same time like the girl in Celtic Woman. I feel like this in when I start living vicariously through her. Maybe if she keeps it up, she'll go to music camp someday too.