Usually I’m traveling too much to get additionally disoriented by the time change. This year I did take a quick trip down to Massachusetts (hiking and checking out the big GOREDSOX city with Jim) over time-change weekend but was back at home to watch it get dark really early tonight. I’m happy there’s nothing I really need to power through.

The last few weeks have mostly been a flurry of baseball-watching and realizing that I’d been stuck on finishing one book for a month. The book was really great [title: A Calculating People] a story about how people learned math in Colonial times in the US and how that gradually changed over time so that now Americans are seen as somewhat number-obsessed by people from elsewhere. However, it was also dense and sort of put my reading gear into low. Once I wrapped it up, I was raring to start a bunch of other books of various stripes and finished a lot of them quickly. Knowing there’s a pattern means that I no longer spend much time worrying “Geez, have I just finally stopped reading?” though those thoughts creep in from time to time.

Similarly, last year when we didn’t do dress-up-and-hand-out-candy with my friends in the neighborhood, I was a bit concerned that maybe we were done with that particular tradition. I like traditions and I like patterns. I’m that lady who goes into the sandwich shop and orders “the usual” and gets (secretly) a little out of sorts if there’s a new person who makes it differently (it’s not them, it’s me, I know that; my coping technique is unstoppable). iTunes updates rattle me. So it was not just a good time but a relief to go hand out candy to hundreds of local kids all while dressed as a bee. And then we retired to eat pizza and talk about Halloweens past and what costumes we might think about for next year. It was a good toe-dip into the season of traditions and expectations and events. A few weeks til the next one, and I’m in bed with a good book.