it's such a beautiful day today. sunny and full blown autumn. the kind of day you drive home with the windows down and you see karey in the front yard raking the leaves, adding to your piles and you feel glad and run inside to find the huge orange 'home and garden' garbage bags. the kind of day it feels great just to be outside, working on your yard together, smelling the mustiness of the leaves as you squish them down in the bag. that kind of day--you know?

we filled five bags full. linda came out at the end and held open the last bag. she gave us the idea of making jack-oh-lantern faces on the bags. now karey is washing her car and i'm waiting for her to finish so i can shower and get ready for the symphony.

last night after i finished writing the family=music=love blog i wiped away a few tender tears and went upstairs, got undressed, into bed and called fatima. her voice was far away like the time she picked up the phone up-side-down and said "hello?" in a tiny far away voice. we should have been going to bed, but my friend's a bad influence on me. finally at 2am i had to put a stop to our conversation, but it wasn't easy let me tell you. once the flood gates have been opened with between us, they can be difficult to close. flood the valley if you will. fatima has been finding out interesting tidbits about her family tree from uncle returned. oh. karey's done gotta showah.