I love fall. It's full of people waxing annoyingly poetic about Pumpkin Spice Lattes and scarves and boring sports like football and the smell of burning leaves and fewer hours of sun and seasonal depression and shredding in some fresh powder and... Okay, so I'm not the biggest fan of fall.
But despite the SNOW we had on Friday, the lack of sun and the cold in the mornings that makes me sleep through spin class, I've found a lot of things to really like recently. Here they are.
1. Body Pump: Body Pump is this weird thing I do 2-3 times a week where I get in a room at the gym with 15-30 other women and we lift weights really fast to horrible pop music. And then you get really big muscles after a few weeks and look at yourself in the mirror and wonder what happened to your frozen custard belly and why your arms look like muscley twigs and why all of your clothes fit better.
It's amazing.
2. Having A Gardening Crush: I live in suburbia. People in suburbia often have nice gardens. Sometimes, you develop Garden Crushes on the people with nice gardens. Sometimes your Garden Crushes leave free irises and daylilies on the curb for others to take. As you're planting your Garden Crush's cast-offs, fantasize about the note you'll write and leave on their door step, expressing your affection. Get cold and go inside instead. Someday, my love. Someday.
3. Spaghetti Squash: So a lot of people already knew this, but spaghetti squash is the shit. You cut it in half, stick it in the oven on 375 or 350 depending on how you're feeling that day, and 45 minutes later, you have pasta! Pasta that counts as a vegetable and won't make your friends with gluten allergies sick. Think of the potential! Spaghetti squash and spicy peanut sauce. Spaghetti squash and whole, roasted garlic cloves. Spaghetti squash n' cheese.
4. Public libraries: I've always loved libraries. Because of the trajectory of my life, every town I've lived in has had a library that was better than the last.
The Green Bank Public Library was my first love, but once they got the new building that was structurally sound and could hold more books, it lost some of its charm.
Enter the Whitesburg Public Library, with more books on Appalachia than you could shake a stick at and one of the more tasteful Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2010 displays in the town (lest we never forget the church with the sign that said "God wants you to be whole," or "Don't Let Cancer Steal Second Base.").
But Whitesburg was overshadowed by the Oberlin Public Library (OPL) with its hot librarians and the fact that it was opened on Saturdays AND Sundays. Be still my reading heart.
And then came the Boulder Public Library. It's a work of pure beauty. A haven for the homeless and homesick alike. There's a fish tank that shows the flow of Boulder Creek for crying out loud! Free WIFI! A free public notary. And when I got my library card, the man who signed me up told me I could take home 40 books that day. That's 4 - 0. I made a joke about not being too ambitious, but I sure as hell tried. My only complaint about the Boulder Public Library is that it has self-checkout. Self-checkout is fine for grocery stores where you don't want people to judge the fact that your grocery basket contains cheese, spaghetti squash, beer, and peanut butter. Self-checkout has no place in a library, where people come to be entertained and informed, and have a little bit of human interaction in the mostly solitary pursuit that is reading.
But other than that, the Boulder Public Library is sheer bliss.
So grab your library cards, hop on your bike, and head to the gym! On your way back, pick up some spaghetti squash and swing by your Garden Crush's house. Maybe they'll give you some of their special desert ground cover if you impress them with your muscles. It might be snowing in Aspen but in the heart of the reader, it's always summer.
Lockman out.
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