It's chilly all-of-a-sudden. It's like it happened over night. I almost made the move from shorts to long pants over the weekend ... but I couldn't do it. Not quite yet.
The kids are back-to-school; I don't mean mine (though it's true of Darling Daughter) or all the little ones but the students at Salve, who returned over Labor Day. I saw cars everywhere — throughout campus and in-town — stuffed with bags, boxes & bicycles.
Milk crates, too; so many uses for milk crates.
And so many families milling about saying temporary good-byes.
The water's still perfect — that's one of those cool (but not cold) things about September: disrobing in the chill then realizing the sea feels like a big blue bathtub if you're brave enough to jump in. Unlike summer, when even tip-toeing in (especially tip-toeing in) can feel so cold, particularly in the mid-section.
Mr. Betty and I saw a whole gang of kids (relatively speaking) jumping in last weekend (or was it the weekend before??). They were walking the plank — a boom, actually — aboard a vessel that was unfamiliar. Perhaps it was in-town for the Classic Yacht Regatta. Or perhaps it's always here/there, and I never noticed it. In any case, they had let the main sheet waaaaay out and secured it, so that the boom was very nearly horizontal to the hull, as if they were running downwind. But they weren't. They were running — that appeared to the best approach — out along the crimson canvas as far they could go without losing their balance, then finally falling in to much fanfare from their friends, who all clambered out to do it again and again (and again) ...
