September 2, 2007

Fall Cleaning

I think it is fall the flip to cool that triggers my need for clean. I could care less about a tidy place in spring; all I want is outside, to dig in the earth and to run wild, but in fall my fancy turns to clean.

Crazy, but on this Labor Day morning as soon as my kid went to work and my husband ran to tennis, I polished the silver to a burnished new high. I brushed the super furry cats into a sleek sea skin and I am about to bake banana bread with the beyond ripe beauties that lie in the big blue bowl I carted recently from a ceramist’s studio in Fez.

I think it is a combination of cool and the looming energy of back-to-school that fuels my frenzy. I want order in order to begin what I always fantasize will be my most productive season, especially after the doldrums of summer. I am not a summer hater, but work does descend to a new low as the temperatures rise and everyone is on vacation so excuses abound. The editor was away, my agent was in Italy, my hands were too sticky to write, and I had to have a cocktail and lie in the grass watching the clouds.

But now the sky is whisked clean blue and the humidity gone and so I seek productivity.