That Old Feeling

Right now, I'm sitting on my couch all by myself in my living room and I'm wearing a sweater and tights and I'm still a little chilly next to the open window.  I breathe in and I smell the first molecules of Autumn in New England.  Next to me are my anatomy textbooks.  I should be studying because I have a midterm one week from Monday.  Instead, I'm blogging because I don't feel like I have a midterm one week from Monday.  Instead, I feel wonderful and blissful and content.  Fall is arriving.

I think Fall is here early this year.  Since I got back from Pennsylvania in the middle of July, there haven't been that many hot days.  Maybe the beach-goers complained about that, but I didn't.  This was Boston's welcome-home present to me after spending all of last year in a place where "fall" is just that thing that happens to you when you get knocked off your surfboard.  Halloween decorations are on the shelves at a lot of stores, and some places are already selling Christmas crap.*  Things are smelling like cinnamon and nutmeg and pumpkin spice.  And if you look closely enough, you can see the slightest hints of death on the leaves of the trees.  Beautiful death.**

My bliss is not exclusively a result of the autumnal air.  My house is pretty cool and I'm getting along well with my roommates.  One roommate and I are starting a tradition of "Saturday Morning Buffy and Doughnuts," which means that on Saturday mornings we watch BtVS and eat doughnuts (if that wasn't clear).  My other roommate and I went to the temple today.  I hadn't been since they changed that thing that they changed that you'd know about if you've been to the temple lately, and it was a great experience that allowed me to think of everything from a new perspective.  It was just so peaceful and heart-lightening.  I love the Boston Temple so much.  Afterwards we went to the cafeteria and got temple cookies, which were good, but I think they were over-hyped so I had unrealistic expectations.  Also they were out of Snickerdoodles, which I've heard are the best ones.  Finally (and maybe this is more of a life-update-post thing), I have a new significant man-type-person in my life.  Emphasis is on the "new," but it's going very well, and I'm happy.

Spending a year being miserable in Hawaii taught me to not take happiness for granted.  Maybe eating temple cookies and watching Buffy and having a boyfriend and enjoying the chill in the weather aren't earth-shattering things, but they're things that make me happy.  I am happy.  It's pretty great.

  

*Christmas merchandise is "crap" until the day after Thanksgiving.  Then it's allowed to be "stuff."  Know your place, holiday-paraphernalia, I mean, really.    

**So I'm morbid.  Deal with it.