For years, around this time of year I would find myself researching other places to live. I was getting impatient for fall, while it was still in the 90s and felt like summer in Texas. I’d read the fall issues of magazines and dream of being in a place where September was time for warm beverages, walks in woods where the leaves were starting to turn colors, and the weather was getting cooler.

And now, I’m in a place like that. The trees are just starting to turn. The mornings are chilly — I have to put on a sweater to sit on my porch — and the afternoons are pleasantly warm. I’m getting baking urges, and I want to drink All the Tea. It keeps blowing my mind that I’m actually getting September in September, not the upper 90s that they’re having back in Texas.

This week we’ve had both kinds of my favorite fall weather. It’s been rainy and cool, and today it’s cool and sunny (now that the morning fog has burned off) but will be warm in the afternoon. It’ll be rainy again tomorrow, which is nice because I’m getting my flu shot this afternoon, and a good rainy afternoon is great for huddling under a blanket with a book while feeling icky in the aftermath of the shot. Even if I’m not feeling icky, I’ll pretend I am so I can have a proper wallow.

Then next weekend, all the fall festivals seem to really get going. I’m volunteering for the one in my town, since I can walk there and it will make traffic nasty enough that I won’t be able to get around, as close as I live to downtown. After that, I’ll have to look at the calendar and prioritize which ones I want to go to. There’s an apple butter festival, a mushroom festival and a couple of harvest festivals, that I know of. They’re putting decorative scarecrows in the park, and there’s going to be a pumpkin float in the lake at the park.

Yes, I do seem to have moved into a Hallmark movie. Still haven’t found the flannel-clad woodworking guy yet, but maybe at one of these festivals …

I’ve been making good progress on my writing, so I should be able to get away enough to really enjoy my surroundings. I’ll be picking up Instagram fodder, so it kind of counts as work.