Horses, Not Zebras

I was all fired up to blog in late August when news of the incredibly reckless Fusion sun-branding debacle hit the scene. I was really, really upset and invested a lot of time in a draft post, then felt I should cool off and give it another read before putting it up. Cuz I was hot about it, hot. Still am. Then Master-slave Conference arrived, i helped with packet stuffing, flirted with the hotel manager, and boy t visited from far away, plus boy c decided to accept My strong suggestion to attend, and two other friends went for the first time at My suggestion, and of course seeing out of town friends, going to classes, that all was a whirlwind. I started a blog about *that*, esp. the last day when I participated in a BDSM research study. Then event drop hit and/or I got something flu-like for a few days, and ever since, well, I've just been in an inexplicable fog. There was some very serious nonsense-drama with a neighbor who wanted to dig under My foundation, and that took a lot of bandwidth for 10 days. Somewhere in there I feel like I've aged rapidly, I feel must stoopider, slightly grasping for or mis-using words, making regular typos and other did-I-really-do-that? mistakes, clumsy, I'm low energy, kinda bummed out and grumpy, even got weepy at work last week which I try to make sure never gets noticed by the male boss (failed), and hey, can always be attributed to PMS or perio, one never really knows. And I'm staying up later and sleeping later and muzzy-headed during the day. Chocolate and caffeine and carb consumption is up, veggie/ salad consumption way down. Thankfully, having My boys around gives Me the ability to notice these things more easily than I might on My own. They give Me a baseline of comparison. I've really been a little perplexed about what's going on, and it even crossed My mind that I should go see a doc to rule out a brain tumor. Brain tumor! Thought I had a damned brain tumor.

But as they like to say in medical circles, when you hear the sound of hooves, think horses not zebras.

Yesterday I looked up at the end of a work day, which is not infrequently about 7pm, and it was fucking NIGHT time out there. And I realized we just had the autumnal equinox (and I again missed the chance to stand an egg on its end, dammit). And I went... DOPE!!!  Of course. It's happening again. It's the changing of the light.  If I had stopped and written all those changes down, I would have put it together. But they were just passing thoughts, dots not connected, which is itself another manifestation of impaired mental clarity. In short, I let it sneak up on Me again.

Also not unlike PMS, this happens on a fairly regular cycle but I somehow manage to not remember/ notice each time. At one point I had light-change alerts set on My phone calendar but they were lost in an upgrade or reboot, leaving Me once more to re-discover what I have learned so many times already.

So it's time to brief the boys more fully about how I need them to be supportive. It's time to re-stock the herbs and vitamins, make up sets of portable packets, and go back to taking them something more like religiously, as I did until some point late last spring. It's time to turn on the sunbox at the office when I arrive and mull over getting one for the bedroom (the timed lights are a nice stopgap though). And time to buy a ticket to Florida in early February cuz man, I can already tell I'm gonna need it.

I really should live closer to the equator. I'm a northern-raise girl with northern genes and frankly, I consider it a genetic defect. Humans left Africa dark skinned, got to northern climes, lived in sod hovels, lost their melanin (think people = white asparagus), turned lily white, and in My case, lived on the northern oceans so they developed freakishly small respiratory equipment that lazily assumed the ocean would always be there doing most of the work to clean and moisturize the air they breathed. Not a fantastic combo for 21st century urban living successful.

The Celts didn't think in terms of four seasons. They had two, the Light and the Dark and each commenced on a solstice. I apparently run on a Light/ Dark two-season cycle too but it turns at the equinox. From here to March is My Dark season and I need to be vigilant. i'm like a clock that slowly winds down, then winds back up.  I mark My calendar and watch the weeks tick toward the winter solistice, then I count the number of weeks the solstice has been receding in the rear view mirror. 12 down. 12 up. Late January is hardest. If ya can make it to WinterFire-is-coming, you're in the home stretch. Yes, there will be wicked WF drop and it will be stupid cold or a blizzard or some such nonsense, but at that point, it's time to start planning the garden.

In fact, I should be doing that now. Fall gardening. Get that dwarf lilac in the ground and buy some interesting tulips to replace the mountain of 'em the sneaky squirrels got last year. And throw down a bunch of crocus if at all possible... Somewhere.  Yes, I should bestir Myself, sit Myself up and go outside every chance I get. *yawn* get Myself up off this couch, out of this bed. *yawn* This is why I have never...had...fall...*yawn*...shit... Crops. Time for more lunchtime walking or at least sunshine sitting.  

Time to get serious about My winter, which has already begun.