The Soul of November

Olivia doing the I've got yur nose thing with The Amazing Bob AKA Grandpa

Oh look, it’s a rainy, chill November Monday morning! Wheee!

One upside, among many, is that this is a short week for most of us.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
~ Herman Melville

I have come to regard November as the older, harder man's October. I appreciate the early darkness and cooler temperatures. It puts my mind in a different place than October. It is a month for a quieter, slightly more subdued celebration of summer's death as winter tightens its grip.
~ Henry Rollins

That Rollins dude, man — always so bright and shiny. He should prolly cheer down a bit before he explodes from all that euphoric buoyancy.
On an up note, The Amazing Bob and I had a visit with The Adorable Olivia on Saturday morning. Yeah, we saw her folks too but OLIVIA!

This will be her first Thanksgiving. This Christmas will be her first one. Her first New Years is coming. This past Halloween was, yes, the very first one. Do kids ever remember anything from their first year? Do experiences imprint but just as a vague sense of happy or not so very jolly?

Bast knows, I'm lucky to remember what I ate for breakfast let alone something that went down 55 years ago. Not even the fainest sense of chipperness or blahness remains. I see pics from when I was three and four (but not earlier. *gasp* does this mean I was adopted?!) and I look cheery enough.

There's much info and study to be found about childhood memory. The big debate, it seems, being whether kiddles recall anything from before they were three. The answer? Maybe, yes/probably, no but, seeing as whatever goes down in those first coupla years is all pre-language and shit, they can't affix words to it.

OK.

I suppose this means that TAB will have to wait until Olivia's a bit older before he begins teaching her how to throw a curve ball.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

~Andrew Wyeth