The Season of Sorrow.

I love autumn. It's my favorite of all the seasons, and here in New England autumn can be pretty spectacular. Makes up for all the snow and the awful, humid/hot summers.

But for some reason, as soon as we get a couple cold nights and cool, sunny days, all my sorrows past and present get dredged up and I have to grapple with them afresh. Mister Woodchuck has learned, after our fifteen years together, that September marks the season of sorrow for me. He does his best to cheer me up, and I appreciate the efforts on his part, but every year is the same.

I can't even quite put my finger on why September makes me so blue. I suppose that a good many of the most unpleasant episodes in my earlier life happened in the autumn, and then there was the dreaded back-to-school business. School was, for me, horrible and filled me with dread. It wasn't until I went off to college that I began to look forward to new semesters.

January always brings on depression, but that's something I'm able to deal with on a practical level using my lightbox. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I can usually head off the worst of it with daily sessions with my lightbox and by March, it's over.

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On a more positive note, Little Woodchuck is still reading! It's slow and steady, and wonderful! Yesterday she started trying to tell time, and she's doing pretty well. She looks for clocks everywhere we go, and reports the time displayed as the closest hour. So far she's amazingly accurate. I have to keep reminding myself that LW is still just a two-year-old, and that these things she's accomplished are not typical of children her age.

We're taking a hiatus on potty training. LW and I both need a break. We'll try again in another month and see how it goes.

MW took LW out last night and tonight to look at Jupiter, some star clusters and galaxies, and the moon through his telescopes. He sets them up in the back yard in the afternoon, they cool down nicely in this dry air we've been having, and by 8:30 p.m. the two of them are out in the dark looking through the eyepieces. I have to say that having a husband who owns two high-end telescopes is very, very cool. We tucked LW into her bed by 9:00 p.m., and MW went back out to the 'scopes for a couple more hours of viewing. MW had to sell off one of his telescopes last year so that some bills could be paid, and I know it was hard for him to let that third 'scope go. Hopefully he won't have to sell off the two remaining 'scopes: he's got a beautiful Newtonian and a super-nice refractor that I believe is Russian. There's also a suitcase full of fantastic eyepieces that he's carefully acquired over the past decade.