The August Doldrums

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Perhaps it was because for 10+ days Julia was out of the country as she helped get Ree settled in in Utah, or perhaps it was because it was crazy hot for several of those days (remember here in Germany the default is *not* to have air conditioning).

Perhaps it's the feeling of getting older as timer continues to march along, with those ongoing reminders like sending your daughter off to college. In a few months I'll have been stumbling along here for half a century and most days I'm still not sure what I'm doing.

I'm not sure what it was, but August was certainly a listless month for me, seeming to drag along forever. I'm glad September is here, the weather is starting to change and new season's always bring new excitement - except for Winter, I am a cyclist after all. Soon the leaves will be turning, we'll all be bundling up in scarves and caps to stroll the Hauptstrasse, and not too long after that Jack comes home.

It's odd having the two oldest out of the house, for a long time I thought, "wow life will be so much simpler when it's just the 4 of us." Not that I don't love all my children, I do, but let's face it, the world is designed around 2.2 children, not 2*2 children, and logistically things are simpler when there are 4 of us. But they're also less interesting. Perhaps this too, contributed to the feeling of stagnancy last month...

So thanks for coming in September, here's hoping you bring a brisk breeze to whisk away the idleness of my August doldrums....