Fall arrived yesterday, and Matt is tired of hearing me say that I absolutely love this season. I love the fall colors on the trees, Halloween, the crisp air, the crunching of leaves underfoot. I posted two pictures that I took last fall during a walk from our apartment to a not-so-near bakery. If you look closely at the second picture, you can see all the colors of the trees in the distance through the fog. THAT is what I love about fall.Yesterday also marked the first day that we used the heater. The thermostat in the bedroom is automatically set to turn on when the room temperature hits 65 degrees. While trying to fall asleep, I heard the hum of the heater kick in…something I hadn’t heard for months. I will have to get used to falling asleep to that again, just like I had to adjust to falling asleep to the whir of our fan during Seattle’s warmer days.

I can also tell when fall is here because the bed sheets are cold when I crawl into bed. I keep a pair of thick socks next to the bed to wear when I fall asleep and when I wake up. Somehow they always get taken off in the middle of the night. Last year, we had a really crisp set of sheets on our bed, and we wondered why we were always shivering when we crawled into bed until we changed the sheets. This year, we have a set of flannel sheets that we will definitely be using all winter.

Matt always falls asleep first, so last night as he was already in a deep sleep, I was still trying to fall asleep. But I had really, really bad gas (thanks to dinner at a Korean tofu restaurant). I kept farting and finally thought, “These are too potent to keep to myself.” I didn’t want to do a Dutch oven to Matt and abruptly interrupt his sleep. Instead, the next time I farted, I slightly lifted up the blanket, which was snug up against Matt’s neck, so that the fumes would come out from under the blanket. That way, it wouldn’t be obvious (like a Dutch oven) that I was trying to wake him up. Immediately, he began coughing and grumbled, “UGH, you stink!!” Beneath the blankets, he kicked me further toward my side of the bed and said, “Face your butt away from me!!” I was cracking up so hard I started to cough. “See, you stink so much that you can’t even breathe!” But he was soon back asleep while I was still snickering to myself. Ahh…I love married life.

Happy autumn!