The fall is my favorite season. I love the shift in the air, the smell of burning wood, the changing colors, the golden slant of light, the perfect chill that makes it a pleasure to be outside, and even lovelier to burst through the door with pink cheeks into a warm and well-lit house. It is a season balanced between extremes, and takes the best from the months bookmarking it and makes it perfect, poetic, and poetry. It's the season of anticipation, because all the best holidays are coming--Halloween and Thanksgiving and the season of present-giving, all of which I get behind whole-heartedly and with an enormous amount of enthusiasm. Also, I enjoy pumpkins and soup.
 
These are fall things, and all through the blazingly hot summer full of melting heat and uncomfortable warmth, I looked forward with great anticipation to my very first fall in Utah--my first autumn in a place that has traditional seasons in something like 7 years. That is a long time to wait for your favorite season, and I was filled with anticipatory dreams--fireplaces and hot cocoa and colors like "russet" and "harvest" and crunchy leaves and golden sunshine and tartan scarves paired with down vests and apple-picking. Things that smell like cinnamon and new school supplies and maybe some picturesque mormons clopping by in their horse-drawn wagons on their way to an autumnal barn-raising. I don't know! I was maddened by hope.
 
At work, they kept talking about how it was going to be a great weekend, and they just hoped it wouldn't snow. Snow! I scoffed. It doesn't snow in October. There's snow already up north, I was informed. I assumed my informants were filthy liars who worked too much and had therefore gone mad. I just flat-out ignored those statements as the ravings of frothing account executives, and toodled on with my week, ignoring the fact that the weather had gone abruptly from distressingly too-warm-for-fall 70 and 80 degrees all the way down, bam, to the 30s and 40s. I shook, freezing quietly to death while waiting for my train, and considered it a fluke.

Hey, did you guys know I totally got a job? No, seriously. I know you didn't realize, but it's true. And it is true, also, that there is a lot to dislike about having a 9 to 5 (or 10 - 6) gig in an office, at a desk, working for the man every night and day. And it is true that I can wring thousands and thousands of words out of the indignity of full-time employment; it is additionally and finally true that I'm a little tired of writing about how tough things are and how so-tragic it is to have a job while the economy goes straight to hell.

We're moving into a weekend, and I don't remember being so grateful for the end of the week in all my long days. I have liked weekends before, but I don't think I ever liked them the way I am crushing on this one right here. I would like to remind myself, as this first week of being back in the traditional workforce winds down and I have two days which I would prefer not be filled with dread and fear, that there are many things that are good, some things that are great, and one or two things that might even be awesome about this whole thing. Then I can move on to the other things there are to think about in the world, like candy corn and dancing girls and universal health care.

I had a mini, minor freak-out yesterday, thinking about having a job and not being good enough immediately, and having to be an expert within the space of two weeks, and wondering what I had gotten myself into, going from making my own schedule to being on someone else's schedule for 40+ hours a week. Commuting, feeding myself on the go, dealing with the rest of my life around the edges of a job. All the standard adult stuff that I had opted out of, for such a long time. The stuff that is surprisingly difficult to opt back into, all the standard grown-up responsibilities that I now have to shoulder up and move on out with, briskly and gracefully, avoiding the land mines and hoping, naively, to kick some enemy butt.

It's what I did for all the years outside of college, and it's what pretty much every adult does every day of her life. It's why most lifestyle magazines exist, right--everyone's looking for tips on how to juggle their busy schedule, slot in work and life responsibilities, doing a kick-ass job and taking names, feeding yourself healthfully and nutritionally, exercising, maintaining your personal relationships, finding time for hobbies and personal enrichment, relaxing, sleeping, and not going a little bit crazy. I was never very good at it--I was one of those perpetually guilty-feeling people who always ended up letting things slide. Fast food, skipping the gym, slumping on the couch and staring at the television for an hour before bed instead of doing something rewarding and goal-oriented. The easiest thing, and sometimes the only thing, was to accomplish the bare minimum--the eating, the sleeping, the working--and let everything slide.

And on my second day of work, the decision is made as to which client I will be proofreading for, exclusive-like, and it is a doozy. It's the client that has got its own drive on the network server, the client that has a half-dozen (maybe more) supplemental style sheets for each individual division, the client that steadily pours work through the department. It's the client that will keep me the busiest, as we toddle through the next three months, and that is a good thing. But looking at the enormous pile of information I am to process and Become an Expert On over the course of the next two weeks, I am feeling a little overwhelmed and wondering what it is going to be like to be fired. Also, kind of looking forward to it.

I know, I'm being automatically negative and pessimistic, and fearing for the worst and feeling needlessly anxious, and I should try very hard, and there is a learning curve. Everything will be sunshine and roses blooming right out my butt hole, but it is frustrating to feel so clumsy, oafish, and like I am asking terribly obvious questions and with each one that drips out my mouth my supervisor is revising her estimation of my intelligence down another handful of notches. It's not just the great and glorious wealth of information I need to process--I keep saying dumb things and making dumb errors because I misread something, and I feel like I'm flailing around, flustered, and gibbering. It's an awesome first impression!

Min, Elmindreda, Minny Cocoapuffs, Cocoapuff, Princess, Crazy Damn Dog, is a nearly 100-pound Neopolitan mastiff, and she is a big, unwieldy mess. She is all clumsy, flailing legs and big dopey face, and she just wants to be loved, more than anything in the world. She is nuts and confused, impossible to train, to discipline, to herd. She is stubborn, easily distracted, a little afraid of everything though she barks a big game, and she has the sweetest face. But when she loves you, you are loved forever and ever and she only ever wants to be with you. If she loves you and you say her name, her little nub of a tail whips into a frenzy, because you have noticed her and that is really all she wanted. For you to notice her, and to give her some of your hamburger, please.

She is a mess, and she reminds me a little bit of me, and she adores me the way no dog has ever adored me before, and all these things together make me love her back. She belongs to E's brother, A, who is never home--he has got school, and work, and a very serious girlfriend. So this dog, who is crazy, and crazy about me, this crazy dog who I am crazy about, is mine. She belongs to me because I love her and she loves me and she needs me. I am suddenly responsible for a hundred pounds of adorable nutcake. I am suddenly aware of how big, how solemn and how real responsibility can be.

In a fit of something--I don't even know what anymore--I applied for a proofreading job. In a fit of something on their end, they offered it to me. And I said, you know, I don't want to work full time. I can't, really. But they needed someone, and as tax season looms at me, like a thing with teeth and eyes that are very bright and red, I realized that I needed the money, and here was an opportunity, right in my lap. I could take the job for a few months, and then leave when my bank account is sexy again! I negotiated, they said yes, and now for the next three months, I am working full time. In January, I swap over to part-time, and thus, they have an experienced proofreader. I have a steady gig with a steady check to keep me in kibble and dog treats, and everyone is very happy.

That happened Friday. I laughed, danced around, and started making exciting, revised budgets which include giant savings accounts (to be decimated by the Feds, come January), curtains, a trip to Machu Pichu, gold-plated licorice, and tiny monkey butlers. I can breathe a little easier for awhile--money has been not tight, exactly, but a little snug, and the state of my savings account a tiny niggling worry at the back of my head. A chance to get ahead a little bit, to establish a relationship with a very reputable agency with lots of business, to meet people and get out of the house and be forced to shower every day, the need to put on pants like clockwork, with just a very small, very brief, only-three-month investment of my time--all very good things.

Hanging out with a pregnant friend in public meant that we met a lot of strangers. Everyone is interested in a pregnant woman, everyone wants to be friends, everyone is fascinated and interested, friendly and intrigued, and everyone is suddenly filled with all kinds of advice about your way of life, your diet, your exercise, your body. People want to touch it, people are interested in it, people are looking at you and judging you and you are on show, on display, and your body is, as I've heard it described by many pregnant women, suddenly public property.

It's kindly meant, I know. People are just looking out for you! And people are always looking for ways to connect, and ways to share their deeply considered opinions with the world at large. If you see an opportunity to launch into your spiel about transfats and fetal alcohol syndrome, why wouldn't you just leap right on that opening and slide all the way in? So to speak. But K.T., who has never been subject to that kind of public scrutiny, that public interest, that sudden, overwhelming flood of advice, was kind of shell-shocked by it. And also by the fact that it has not stopped. She's breastfeeding now, and the baby has to eat, wherever she is. And now the world is fascinated by her boobs, has an opinion about where she feeds, how she feeds, how often she feeds, and whether her breasts are obscene.

So that was the longest I've been in San Francisco since I had moved away, and also the longest I've done nothing at all on the Internet except check my email quickly on a really crappy free connection which was worth every penny, and both things are either equally disorienting, or have combined forces to create a new and magnificent level of disorientation such that my head doesn't feel like it is on quite straight. On Sunday, the longing for everything to be normal and regular and quiet, to have Internet and E and my cat (not in that order, I don't think) was overwhelming. The urge to call back for my things and have them all shipped (including my wireless router, E, and my cat) was stronger than it has been in a long time. I was homesick but also sick at the thought of leaving.

It was an astonishing week. I spent two days with K.T. and her two-month old. I propped little Tee up on my knees and she stared at me in wonder and I stared back at her in awe, and then she wobbled her head and looked at my left earlobe in bewilderment, and then she was puzzled by my chin and sort of listed over to the side and found much to consider in the couch cushions, and I cannot even tell you how spectacular it was, this weird little unfocused, amazed, confounded and lovely little human who keeps screwing up her forehead and concentrating very hard on becoming herself.

My intentions were good--I was going to stay on track, when I was away. I had a bunch of balls up in the air, and was feeling pretty confident about every one of them. Exercising nearly every weekday, up so early and out the door and down the street on my bike, into the pool with the chatty old ladies who were busier gossiping than water aerobicizing (it is sad to take satisfaction in working harder than chatty old ladies, but you take your motivation where you can get it, right? Your sad, sad motivation). Every morning, a protein shake with calcium-enriched soy milk and a little frozen fruit, washing down a handful of supplements. Every morning, posts finished asap, freelance work lined up and shot down, an afternoon of writing. 100 words of short fiction, 1000 words of the memoir. Toying with adding a few thousand words of fiction, even, but then when would I inhale episodes of Gossip Girl? Let's not go crazy.

It was only a short few weeks of feeling like everything was on track and I was a goddess, an angel of organization, fulfilled and happy and busy with the right amounts of work and pleasure, spiritual enlightenment and total awesomeness. I was even cooking for myself, decimating the long-unexcavated contents of my freezer, actually preparing the food I had optimistically bought, instead of giving up eating at home as soon as all my convenience food was gone and everything else actually needed more attention and effort than hitting a button on the microwave. I was doing well and doing good for myself, and I sailed out of my apartment on Tuesday morning, confident that so much hard work and happiness and feelings of contentment would absolutely carry through, and I would be as awesome on the road as I ever was, in my house, at my desk, ten feet from my stocked fridge and five minutes from the gym.

It took a few days before I figured out what it was--why I felt so tired, why my legs were kind of sore, my ankles felt a little throbby, my butt was looking a little more taut, maybe, or that could have been wishful thinking, and I was so very, very tired all the time. The walking. All the walking I did. I haven't walked like that, and sometimes in four-inch heels, since, well, since I lived in a city where you can walk everywhere and to everything.

Bike riding is marvelous and it gets you everywhere quickly, but there is really nothing in the world like your own two feet, heaving your butt all the way through the world. There's a reason doctors recommend weight-bearing exercise as the most healthful and calorie burning, and that is because your carcass is a big damn chore to haul across the surface of the earth. Your legs have to not only pump and move and propel you forward, but they've also got to support you and keep you upright and balanced and provide finely tuned direction and steering. Your arms are there for stability and extra momentum, your ankles are taking on a lot of the weight and  much of the steadying chores, and your shoulders are moving and your entire body is engaged in the process of throwing you forward and out into the world and up the hills and down the street and it is hard damn work.