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Saturday, November 8

harbingers of fall: butt-shorts & scarves

As Lila and I gently float back down to earth and buckle up for a bumpy ride, we have realized that Thanksgiving is, like, tomorrow. Or something. So we have to get our tails in gear. We have to figure out where in Tucson sells amazing, moist, flavorful turkeys for seven dollars or less. We have to make important decisions about pies. We have to find vegetable recipes that don't involve chicken broth or bacon so that we can feed the vegetarian who will be dining with us this year.

Most importantly, we've got to start decorating things. We find it somewhat difficult to decorate for the fall holidays around here because we still feel like fall ought to include colorful foliage, brisk afternoons, leaf piles, and kicky scarves.

The unnecessarily tiny leaves of the palo verdes and the mesquites don't turn colors, exactly. They get yellow and then brown and then the trees dump them unceremoniously onto the ground where they eventually slip into the spaces between the gravel and disappear. So autumnal leaf bouquets for the "dining room" table are out. Ditto with bowls of pinecones and, obviously, leaf piles of any variety.

Kicky scarves do have their place in Tucson, even in November when it's still 85 degrees during the day, but that place is apparently around the necks of UA sorority girls who seem to have made a collective decision that donning thick parkas with furry hoods in combination with butt-shorts and sandals doesn't make people wonder why they're bothering to go to college at all. Maybe it's all done in irony. I don't pretend to understand.

In any case, scarves, sadly, are also out as neither Lila nor I own a single pair of butt-shorts.

I suppose we could make the drive up to the top of Mt. Lemmon if we really want leaves and pinecones. We haven't actually made that drive since the great Aspen Fire of 2003 which (I'm doing the math right now) means at least one of us is totally lame but otherwise has no relevance to this discussion.

So Lila came up with the next best option which is collecting dried flowers and sparkly branchey things and seedpods dyed earthy red colors from the aisles of Michael's and running out of the store as fast as we can to avoid paying for them, thereby maintaining the illusion that we are engaging in the fall tradition of decorating using found objects such as branches coated in gold glitter picked up off the ground.

I'm kidding, of course.

Actually, we sauntered into the store wearing our favorite butt-shorts and fuzzy hooded parkas and paid for every last one of those stalks of dried weeds and now we have a pretty wreath on the front door and some bundles of seedpods above the doors in the living room and we're feeling all autumnal and quite pleased with ourselves but also our nether regions are rather chilly so you'll have to excuse us while we go put on something decent such as a chic snowpants/tube top/ear muffs combo.

2 comments:

Wingal said...

A very lovely wreath. Butt-shorts, alas, are NOT an option here, where it is a glorious 45 degrees and the wind instantaneously freezes the tip of your nose off.

Please do post a picture of Lila in her butt-shorts. I'm intrigued.

Jenny said...

She says no. Butt-shorts are SO last Wednesday. Gawd.