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There’s just one more month to go until the Winter Solstice and then the days start getting longer again. We can do it. (Right?)

(Picture from Red Butte Garden yesterday–there’s a Sunday morning yoga class there we tried out!)

No words today, just some images for Peak Fall, from Mousekin’s Golden House to Millais to The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady:

Via an Austin Kleon newsletter, here is writer Matt Thomas talking about throwing away the idea of a daily routine for a seasonal one, and mapping out a year of habits and goals rather than just focusing on the day-to-day.

Fall is a time to write for me as well, but it also means welcoming—rather than fighting against—the shorter days, the football games, the decorative gourds…Come summer, I’ll feel less stress about stopping work early to go to a barbecue or movie because I know, come autumn, I’ll be hunkering down. More and more, I try to live in harmony with the seasons, not the clock. The result has been I’m able to prioritize better.

This is why I quit my job: So that when friends are in town and we talk the day before about going to the hot springs on a Tuesday afternoon, I can…just go to the hot springs on a Tuesday!

I introduced a couple more people to Maple Grove and truly, fall is the best time for it–golden light, fall colors, the river not-too-cold, the hot springs not-too-hot.

Maybe every Tuesday afternoon should be an adventure day in my new freelance life!

This is me re: freelance taxes, making quilts, pretty much anything lately…but I am having a good time so I’ll go with it. (Art by Made By Nelson and I love the nasturtiums.)

This Virginia Sole-Smith interview with Chelsea Conaboy, author of Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, was just fascinating. Conaboy recently wrote a NY Times op-ed–“The Maternal Instinct is a Myth” and I was ready to hear more.

You can listen or read the transcript here, and it’s really cool, even for this childless person. Brain wiring (yay)! The patriarchy (boo)! Reinforcing the need for community in all things, especially raising another generation of humans!

Some highlights:

In 1877, Charles Darwin published a journal about his own son’s development, and that kind of launched the field of child development. Following his example, lots of women started forming child study societies documenting their own children’s growth and sharing what they learned. Very soon after that, they were told that they couldn’t be trusted for this work, that their own “maternal instincts” made it impossible for them to be objective observers.

…the vast majority of research in this area is still in gestational, cisgender mothers. But what there is in fathers in particular, and some other non-gestational parents, foster mothers and adoptive mothers, shows that there are similar neuro-like hormonal shifts that occur when you become a parent, even if you’re not a birthing parent. That is thought to also prime the brain for this hyper responsiveness. And there is a global circuitry that develops over time.

It was hard to narrow down what to pull because it’s a wide-ranging discussion–human evolution, reproductive justice–so give it a read.

Via Jocelyn Glei this morning, a list of 103 things one of the founders of Wired wishes he’d known earlier. A lot of them are your basic good advice you hear (be nice! take breaks!) but I do love a list, so I read it all. My favorites:

• When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be real. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you — with your unique talents and experience — can do, then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are the ordained. It is your duty to work on things that only you can do.

• You can’t reason someone out of a notion that they didn’t reason themselves into.

• Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact only apply to jobs you are unqualified for.

• When someone tells you about the peak year of human history, the period of time when things were good before things went downhill, it will always be the years of when they were 10 years old — which is the peak of any human’s existence.

I don’t even have pictures; we didn’t go on a hike. Toby’s insulin dose continues to mess with him, accident-wise. So why was it great? We weren’t at the hospital. For the first time in two weekends! And having just one of the two creatures I love most be sick–rather than both–is enough to make it a fantastic weekend.

In other words, the universe is playing this song and I’m listening:

It’s still summer and we’re still dealing with poop–yesterday because we were concerned at how dark Doc’s was. We ended up in the ER again (because American healthcare really doesn’t give you another option on a Sunday night) and he does have a little bit of internal bleeding, probably from the diverticulii poking at his guts.

He wasn’t in pain, his vitals were fine, and his white blood count was just barely elevated, so we got to go home and just monitor everything until the follow up tomorrow with the doctor who treated him in the hospital.

Truly, universe, I’m ready to stop talking about poop. Any time…