Change of season...

It's that welcomed time of year again. The temperature outside - 61 degrees.  Overcast with the chance of rain.  A gentle breeze, and the crepe myrtle has dropped its leaves for the winter.  Yes, I know that for some, 61 degrees is a heat wave calling for a trip to find tasty and decadent ice cream.  However, in Houston, that same change in the weather is cause for release from the heat stress of the summer, and just sets our inner beings to want to go run around the park 2 or 3 or 10 times.

It does bring to mind the fact that there could be a Thanksgiving around the corner, even though Hobby Lobby has been screaming fall and Halloween at us for weeks already, and in some corners of town, and shame on them, the Christmas decorations are already being attached to the buildings. Whoa!  Can we not just relish in the signs given us by nature?  The change in the light, the onset of showers, and noticeable ups and downs of barometric pressure that make our long-since healed broken bones ache, the thrill of wondering whether we need a sweater to walk outside (and not just to help us survive the air-conditioned workplace?), the tinge of a smell of fallen leaves and dampness of the earth, the availability of puddles in which to stomp our feet - even if we don't?

I will choose in the next weeks to get outside as much as possible - maybe even to take a walk in the rain.  I would like a HUGE umbrella, like that of the little lady in the picture.  And if anyone comes across me walking, they might think that I, like the girl in the picture, look a bit sad.  They will be wrong.  I will choose to interpret that look as a reflective one.  Being reflective might have a twinge of sadness in it, but it is more about sorting out the world, and what you are doing in it.  In my mind, doing that with a walk outside is much more likely to be successful than by doing it anywhere else.

More so as the seasons change.