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Swing SeasonOctober 28, 2005 So here it is late October: dark is closing in from both ends of the day, Daylight Savings Time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning, Rhodry started sleeping on my bed last week (strictly a cool-weather thing with him), and I started wearing gloves a few days ago, but I've had a hard time believing that it's almost November because the foliage is still mostly green, though definitely faded and beginning to shrivel around the edges. Last night I pulled my second comforter off the sofa where it's been folded up all summer and threw it on the bed. (Second comforter is an old camp sleeping bag, dead-duck motif on one side, dark russet on the other. I keep thinking I should gussy it up with a duvet cover so no one will know how cheap I am, but I spent about $23 for the sleeping bag and I'll be damned if I'll spend three, four, five times that for a cover.) I've been putting off and putting off taking out the winter clothes and putting away the summer, but while riding this afternoon I couldn't stop thinking about my two pairs of fleece-lined schooling tights, so when I got home from the barn (5:45, almost pitch dark) I hauled the big cardboard box out of the closet before I'd even had a beer. All evening during work breaks I've been taking summer stuff off hangers and out of drawers, folding it up (no one's mother would approve of my folding technique), and stacking it on the bed, and removing winter stuff from the box and putting it in the drawers just vacated by cut-offs and tank tops or hanging it on the hangers just stripped of short-sleeve shirts and warm-weather dressy duds. The closet shelf formerly occupied by T-shirts is now piled with sweaters, all of which, I'm pleased to note, are either pass-alongs from friends or acquisitions from the thrift shop. The seasonal switcheroo is now accomplished. The next step is taking inventory. Like do I have enough long underwear (probably -- I replaced the two with shot elastics last winter) and jeans and turtlenecks? This last takes close inspection: no New England horsegirl ever had too many turtlenecks, and true, there are quite a few now hanging in the closet, but I had this traumatic experience last winter when I went to wear my very favorite burgundy turtleneck out to dinner and discovered that the cuff seams were split beyond hope of invisible repair. This hadn't just happened, you understand, but when I'm headed to the barn, I don't notice split seams, frayed cuffs, and protruding elbows, and I'm far more likely to be heading to the barn than out to dinner. Dress is semi-scruffy for most island social occasions, but sometimes I like to surprise my friends into a "hey, you clean up pretty good!" Only one more thing to do before I'm ready for serious fall: get my brown wool Greek fisherman's cap out of the coat closet. Six months of the year, that cap might as well be glued to my head; the last few days, truth to tell, my hair has been cold without it. I've had it since my D.C. days; I'm not sure people who knew me back then would recognize me now if I didn't have it on.
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