The rain has started in the city

I’ve been back from Italy for ten days – just about how long I was gone – and fall has officially, well, fallen. In Rome, it got to be 90 degrees. Even in Venice I was fine at night with a sweater. But in the last two days in New York, as rain has poured from the sky and into my leaky boots, I’ve started layering under my rain jacket and wondering when I should pull out my woolen winter coat. I still need to get my AC out of the window so the draft (and noise) stops seeping into my apartment.

Right now I’m sitting on the couch writing this wrapped in a blanket. My heat is on, but it’s still chilly.

Fall 2013, Prospect Park

I’ve said it on this blog before and I’ll say it again: Fall is my favorite season. I love the crisp air and the smell of the leaves, apple cider and pumpkins, Halloween, everything. But October is already almost over, winter is peeking over its shoulder, and I’m just not ready. I need to spray my new boots so I can wear them in the rain! I probably need a better fall jacket, and I definitely need some new sweaters. I should figure out a humidifier situation because the heat has only been on for a few days and already I’m drying out. I’d probably be handling this all a little better if I weren’t still recovering from vacation, and if the rainy weather hadn’t brought on some allergies.

It’s hard to stay active in the fall and winter. It’s getting darker earlier – Daylights Saving Time ends next weekend – and between that and the weather I’m going to have some trouble convincing myself to get out and do things in the months to come. So if you have suggestions, send them my way! I need all the encouragement I can get.

But the rain is stopping, the temperature is going up tomorrow, and there’s still so much autumn loveliness to look forward to! Halloween is next weekend, as is the marathon, and the leaves are just starting to change color. I can’t wait to see what Prospect Park looks like this fall – it was spectacular last year.

If you, like me, are already feeling the urge to hibernate, you might like this song by The Doubleclicks that describes exactly the situation I find myself in. Except minus the cats.

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Summer’s end

I can’t believe it’s almost September. This summer has absolutely flown for me. It started out strong with my trip to California and has continued to be great, though I’ve definitely spent too much time inside. It never got terribly hot here this summer, something which didn’t bother me at all! I’ve never been a fan of hot weather.

It’ll be time soon enough for me to tell you, again, how much I love fall, but for now I want to say that while I can see the days getting shorter I still love that it’s light in the mornings when I leave for the gym, and light when I get home. Walking out of my apartment some days lately it’s been just a little cool when there’s a breeze, but not cool enough to need a jacket. Today on the subway back to Brooklyn it was quiet – so quiet that I got a seat the whole way home. Everyone is leaving the city, or at least taking off of work, for one last summer weekend.

I don’t have any special plans yet, but I hope to spend at least part of the weekend in the park. I know how much I’ll miss this weather when it’s cold and slushy outside, but right now that seems like it happened so long ago that it’s almost not real. The summer’s flown by, but it’s also been summer forever.

How are you celebrating the end of summer, or the beginning of fall?

PS New post for FIPS here, and as you may have noticed, I’ve switched over to WordPress. If you follow me on a reader, update your links accordingly!

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Springtime in NYC: Don’t blink or you’ll miss it

Here in New York we’ve officially taken a left turn from “Is it spring yet?” into “Should I put the air conditioner in the window now?” territory. In just a few weeks we’ve entered the world of not needing to wear a jacket at night and leaving the ceiling fans on at all times. God forbid I fall asleep under my quilt, because I willwake up sweaty and uncomfortable.

This is my problem with springtime: it’s too short. If I’m going to have to deal with seasonal allergies and sporadic rainfall, can’t I at least get a month where the high temperature is seventy-five and the low is sixty? We’ve already left that high temp in the dust, and we’re only halfway into May! And as you might remember, winter dragged things out for an obscenely long time.  

I don’t mean to be ungrateful – I’ve already had some really beautiful days outside, and sitting on the terrace at my office during lunch is one of my greatest summertime pleasures – but I’m just not built for warm weather. I get sluggish and crabby. I like choosingto wear shorts, not feeling I have to do it or overheat when wearing jeans. I’d also prefer to never again sit down on a bench in shorts and burn my legs, but we can’t get everything we want.

On Tuesday I had some friends over and one of them helped me put my air conditioner in the window. Yes, I gave in. It was, as always, a harrowing ordeal, and I live in fear that it will somehow fall out of the window and onto someone. It’s a mostly irrational fear (I’m resisting looking up statistics about how often it happens) and if it did fall, it’d hit the garbage cans, not the sidewalk, but try telling me that when we were maneuvering it around on the sill.

Anyway, it’s now successfully installed and I can use it to keep the air circulating through my apartment. Of course, today it was cooler, so I might not even need to turn the AC on. NYC weather, I officially give up on you.

In other news, my first piece for the Toast is up here! It’s about some of my favorite Louisa May Alcott characters, from the books Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.

Edited to add: I hit publish on this, and then looked at the weather forecast for the next week. Temps no higher than 72 and no lower than 58. So maybe we’re going to get some spring weather after all. Guess I could’ve waited a little longer on the whole air conditioner rant…

In the limbo between winter and spring

Yesterday I bundled up like it was winter again. The temperature was in the upper thirties in the morning today as well — not terribly cold when you figure in all the weeks of temps in the twenties and even the teens, but I pulled on my gloves and covered my ears like there was a Polar Vortex, because I don’t do well when the weather changes quickly. A thirty-degree drop in temperature or a quick shift from dry weather to wet can bring on an attack of the sneezes. A quick Google search shows I’m not the onlyone to deal with this.

So far I’m sniffle-free, with only a hint of a sore throat, so I’m hoping to stay allergy-free for a little while longer, but I’ve been thinking about the way the seasons impact my motivations.

I’ve been going to the gym on and off (mostly on!) since last summer, even through some of the very cold weeks this winter, but after experiencing the warmth of last week it’s been easy to give myself a pass these cold mornings. It should get easier as the weather gets nicer, but I’ve also known myself to become inert once the weather’s been nice for a while. Too many hot, busy days and I’ll stay at home in front of the AC even on a perfectly pleasant day because I’m too lazy to leave home.

I think this means I should always live somewhere that has seasons. If I lived someplace where the weather was nice all the time, I’d eventually get complacent and never leave the apartment, knowing I could always do it the next day. And if the weather was terrible all the time – well, you get the picture. I can be a bit of a homebody when left entirely to my own devices, so it’s good I have the contrasting seasons to remind me to step outside.

I’ll be getting out this weekend to go see a show with a friend, but I also want to take a walk and see how the tiny park near my apartment is doing. I spotted some daffodils last weekend; I hope the frost hasn’t hurt them. About a year ago, on a warm, sunny, April morning, I had an appointment to see my apartment for a second time and ultimately to put down a deposit. On my way over I walked by this tiny park. I’d walked by it many times before, but I’d never been there in spring, and I managed to catch it while it was in full bloom. There was a full palette of colors and flower varieties, and I just sat on a bench and took it all in. By the time I got to the apartment, my vision was a little rosy, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows didn’t hurt either. It was a good decision even so.

The temperature is supposed to climb back up to 63 degrees on Saturday. I can hardly wait.

Has everyone recovered from the winter? What are you most looking forward to about spring?

And, a post by me about that Toughest Job in the World video over at F’d in Park Slope.

Winter weather

In my hometown in western New York, we have a saying: If you don’t like the weather, wait twenty minutes. It’s pretty apt in a town where one April we had 80 degree days, followed by a late snowstorm.

One day last April, here in NYC, I walked six blocks from work to a coffee shop, in rain that turned to snow that turned to rain that turned to snow that turned to rain. I know intellectually that this can happen when the temperature hovers right around freezing, but this was a pretty dramatic demonstration of it.

Last week, we had a snow storm. Sunday or Monday we had some kind of rain (I was holed up sick in my apartment for most of it, but the snow is gone and I’m pretty sure rain was involved). Today it was about ten degrees out and there was something called a polar vortex. This Saturday it’s supposed to be fifty degrees and rain.

It will take longer than twenty minutes, but a forty-degree jump in temperature in one week seems pretty drastic. I’m totally blaming my illness on the weather, because, seriously, our bodies are not meant for this.

At least the days are getting longer. According to this handy site, by the end of the month the sun will still be up when we leave work! Well, if we leave work at 5 p.m., we’ll be out in time to see the sun set twelve minutes later. But still, progress! Only seventy-one days till spring.

Anyone have weather stories to share?