And basically what I mean by “it’s fall” is I’ve given myself permission to light my fall-scented candles. The “beginning of fall” is such a hard thing to pin down. School started for my kid almost two weeks ago, some leaves here in Chicago have been changing colors and even dropping in early August, and now it’s September. But it’s still warm enough to pull out the splash pad and everything is mostly still green. There should be a specific name for the August/September time frame where it feel like fall is starting but summer has not yet ended.
But anyway, I’m lighting my “fall” candles.
Last weekend I went to Houston to celebrate my best friend’s wedding! Yay!!! I took my daughter with me because I’m still breastfeeding her, so my parents came early to help watch her while I did wedding-related stuff (I was a bridesmaid so there was a lot of stuff). Unfortunately she has just started getting separation anxiety, so there were a lot of tears. But also a lot of cute pictures of her doing stuff like going in the pool.
On Friday for the bachelorette we did one of those painting classes where everyone paints the same picture, and it was so much fun! Definitely want to do one again. As someone whose never considered herself good at drawing or painting, the teacher was really great and the steps ended up being really easy.
After the wedding, my friend sent me a picture of me and her brother standing right outside the reception, and…it felt so weird because when I left Austin at 18, he was still shorter than me. Now he’s over six feet tall. And it’s not like I never saw him again or anything, but the few times that I have, especially since moving to Chicago, have not been enough to change the perception of him in my head. I’ve noticed this with almost everyone I know from childhood: whatever age they were when I was 18, they’ve just stayed that age in my head forever.
Now I’m trying to decide what to do with my bridesmaid dress. Normally I don’t keep fancy clothes I will rarely wear, but I actually like this dress a lot. I just don’t know whether I want to get it hemmed to calf or knee length and try to wear it to dinners and stuff, or whether I want to set it aside for some as yet unkown , decades in the future use (mother of the groom dress? Daughter’s prom dress?). Although I guess getting it hemmed doesn’t preclude wearing it as a formal gown in the future.
Speaking of “wedding” stuff, my husband got my wedding and engagement ring back from the jeweler (he opted to get my rings resized rather than buy me different ones). It feels really good to have them back on my finger, between pandemic weight gain and pregnancy my ring size went up 1.5 sizes and I hadn’t worn my own rings for something like two years. I had a costume jewelry piece that was my great-grandmother’s that I was wearing, which is cool in that it’s a small piece of family history, but still not the same as wearing my own rings.
If you made it all the way to the end, thanks for caring enough about me to read my rambling thoughts. Maybe leave a comment telling me your favorite fall candle scent? This year I got “sweater weather”, “coffee + whiskey”, and “marshmallow fireside” from Bath & Body Works, which are all new to me scents.
Shaney Irene 
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