My Favorite Day

It's my favorite time of the year. You'll hear me say that at various times throughout the year, but this one is really my favorite. I love fall. In fact, THE favorite day of the year for me is not even a holiday. It's when the days have been getting chilly in the mornings, and cool in the evenings, but still nice and warm during the days, then that one day comes. The one where someone finally breaks down and builds a fire in their fireplace or wood stove and you can smell the smoke in the crisp air. It has a different smell to it, when it's mixed with the smell of cold. It's true. And it only smells just like that for a little while. It's wonderful. If fills my little heart with energy and excitement. I get excited to put the yard away for the winter, and to drag out down filled comforters, to snuggle up with my family earlier in the evening than usual to watch favorite movies that we've set aside specifically for fall and winter viewing. All of a sudden my desire to bake kicks in and I long to take a sabbatical, mostly so I can hibernate. Mornings filled with home cooked breakfasts like sweet potato waffles and dinners that include rolls or cornbread made from scratch, and we actually set the table, and eat together as a family. Everyone gets along and loves each other. We start projects. Maybe leather working or salvaging components from an electronic piece of junk that I've threatened to throw away because it doesn't work. Picking apples and canning applesauce. Perhaps we begin a season long tournament of chess or Killer Bunnies. Does this really happen? No, it doesn't. I am practiced at the art of deception and I have fooled myself into thinking it ever might. Our days in the fall are filled with the same chaos as the rest of the year. There is very little home cooking, and definitely no hibernating. But the feelings are there just the same and that's good enough for me since I prefer to live in Fantasyland instead of reality. That one favorite day, that first smell of woodsmoke on a cold morning, well, that's real, and it has yet to come this year for me.