It's 9AM
Almost like clockwork
I wake up and stare at the ceiling.
The bedside display is blocked.
Red light is too distracting and bright.
But it shoots a laser beam into the sky
And shows the time on the ceiling.
2:00.
Or any minute between that and 2:05 AM.
Every night since before this summer for as long as I can recall.
I wake up roughly five (and sometimes four) hours after I go to bed.
My brain is wondering why my body is doing it.
Or my brain is wondering why it’s trying to pass the blame off on my body.
I go through the usual suspects.
Am I hungry?
I haven’t been eating much as of late, which could be contributing.
Bathroom?
Usually taken care of before laying down the first time.
Worry?
Finances do occupy a lot of my thoughts.
Stress?
Like 99% of most people, I do need to get laid more.
Other things?
Thinking about a story I’m working on, thinking about this newsletter, about the youtube channel I’ve made, and the more I want to make.
All those are not a long list of worries but do occupy brain space.
Except…
This weekend, fall fell and I raked.
We were baseball free and stuck around the house to do house stuff.
There are no trees in our yard, but our neighbors have enough that one of my fall exterior honey do’s is raking.
And I do it.
But I felt like channeling some stuff from the past, and it was only a five foot stack of dried brown leaves and teeny tiny sticks.
I burned them in the fire pit.
Papaw used to rake his yard into the ditch and set the ditch on fire.
He would spend the morning working one section of his yard, monitoring that fire, while he raked another pile into a second spot, ready for the afternoon.
My brother and I got Firewatch a lot when we were younger.
We stopped around twelve, because of being twelve and having our own leaves to rake and burn.
I wouldn’t mind having one more weekend with the old man, I thought, leaf smoke chasing me no matter which side of the fire pit I chose to sit.
We’d rake leaves and talk the talks and he would have a couple of cold one’s in the cooler.
Cold cokes or Dr. Peppers or Shasta’s, depending.
Papaw didn’t drink beer.
I was drinking water.
And raised my glass in a silent toast to the gone man.
It seems like I miss my grandparents more when the seasons change.
Like clockwork.
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My favorite part of Fall is the Halloween-related tv shows and movies that come on during the season + the books I read. Currently watching The Fall of the House of Usher (created by Mike Flanagan) on Netflix, the new Goosebumps tv series reboot (which is a lot of fun) on Disney+/Hulu + many horror films/shows from teen horror (I just finished the brilliant The Final Girls -which btw is strangely free on YouTube) to old school Universal Pictures/Hammer Horror classics (especially into Dracula this year) ranging from atmospheric to gory + my favorite Regency Romance shows new seasons like Hotel Portofino season 2 which released yesterday + I'm reading a couple short stories by horror author Caleb Stephens and about ready to begin reading my special hardcover Halloween-edition of When the Night Bells Ring by Jo Kaplan. Oh! And the NBA basketball season starts October 24th and ready to start watching my favorite team the Golden State Warriors who have the 2 greatest 3-point shooters of all time, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.