11 things during my son's piano lesson

1. I'm sitting in the car, working and blowing my nose.

2. Two quotes about breathing are on my mind. Mary Oliver's line, "Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?" and these words from Thich Nhat Hanh: "Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor."

3. As my wife and kids will attest, I'm a big baby when I have a cold.

4. The woods and dirt road look like something out of a picture book. October has given us quite a show this year. Did anyone read the "Toot and Puddle" books by Holly Hobbie? There are some fabulous fall illustrations from this neck of the woods, and that really is how it looks right now.

5. Do the clocks go back this coming weekend? They must. Oh boy. Here we go, into the dark. I'll bring a headlamp and a bucket of color and homemade cookies and something like fire. What will you bring?

6. I'm thankful for my new therapist, who is as pragmatic as she is kind. And for the way vine climbs brick and the leaves just keep coming down.

7. My God, I miss Tony Hoagland. I mean, really. Read this:

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

8. I hear "Stand By Me" from inside the house. Sorry, now it is probably going to be stuck in your head.

9. I want to offer something wonderful for December, but what that will be hasn't yet come to me. Requests welcome! It will be the fifth anniversary since my first-ever writing group, which bears celebrating.

10. Thanks to a participant in the Room to Write group who gave me the nudge I needed, I got back on my yoga mat last week after a very, very, did I mention very, long hiatus. I am doing the free video series she recommended - around 20 minutes a day. And once again, I wonder why I stayed away for so long from something that brings space and ease and calm to my being. No matter the why. It's the coming back that matters.

11. I could wander into those woods, lay myself down against a carpet of pine needles and oak leaves, and blend into dusk.