Don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows

You can feel it in your fingers, you can feel it in your toes. And I can definitely feel it today. That autumnal chill, the fog blanketing the ground and changing the way sound carries. Wearing jeans instead of shorts to walk the dog at night. Sleeping under a blanket and not just a sheet.

I'm even lurching headlong into fall travel plans. My son is plotting his exit from the Big Apple and cross-country journey by Greyhound to Tucson. My sister and nephew are making plane reservations to come north from Peachtown and visit us for Thanksgiving. My wife is threatening to paint the den a pumpkin color. We are facing the music and getting serious about tile for the den floor so we can put the woodstove back together in time for frost and snow.

Fall classes are cranking up again, too. On paper, I'm scheduled to teach on Mondays and Fridays, in addition to Thursdays and Saturdays. The increase will be an adjustment, and where will the drum circle fit in? I have a free sample class to do on Sunday morning at the yoga factory and a presentation to an alumni group next Thursday, so I should prepare something a little different to avoid just sleepwalking through it. What "new truth" can I tell them that they haven't heart a thousand times before?

Back when I was a callow youth, we used to call this "football weather," but I haven't been to a football game in so long, I'll have to call it something else. Leaf-raking weather, mold and decomposition weather, the gloaming. Corduroy and flannel weather. If you watched the moon rise last night, you probably saw a bright orange disk just above the horizon over toward the northeast, just past full. It's time pull out the wool socks and hat.

Like I can control any of this stuff. It's going to happen the way it's going to happen, and I'll just have to pick up on the rhythm and get through it.