"It peed on me" ...

Two kids, both about eight to ten years old, and perhaps brother and sister, slowly passed me on their bikes as the boy yelled out shaking his hand, "it peed on me."

His yell startled me from my thoughts in which I was I was quite lost while walking by the river.

It was a glorious sunny midday after a few morning sprinkles and apparently quite a few others had the same idea to take advantage of the break in the rains.

I almost burst out laughing, but checked myself from that act, lest I confirm to passers by that I am indeed a nutcase!  I watched the brother and sister park their bikes, and the brother yelled again, "I swear, it peed on me."

By now, I was utterly curious.  What was that "it?"

I was now about to pass them when I saw what the girl had in her hand--a woolly bear caterpillar.

I assumed that the boy too had picked up one, but when it showed its displeasure/panic at having been abruptly removed from its crawl, well, it peed/excreted on him :)

The crawling caterpillar is yet another evidence that the season has changed.  It is as if we live in a Truman Show kind of settings, and the Ed Harris equivalent decided that the story needed a change and flipped a couple of switches.

The warmth of the fabulous summer is long gone.  When I wake up in the morning, I need to turn on the lights first because of how dark it now is at 5:30 in the morning.  The sky is often overcast, and it has started raining.  After almost ten years here, I know all too well that the rains have merely begun, and rainy days will outnumber sunny ones all the way until Memorial Day.

With the changing seasons, our daily activities begin to change.  We begin to stay indoors more and more.  We begin to bake dishes in the ovens.  All of a sudden, soups and hot tea become so appealing.  The home heaters is already on. 

As it darkens even more, we will begin our complaints about the weather.  About how damp it always is.  How we can't seem to shake off the coldness.  And then we will compare our conditions with the blizzards from Montana to Maine and thank heavens we live here.  But then we will look at Southern Californians having a good time by the Pacific, and we will wonder why our coasts have to be so windy and cold all the time.

Slowly spring will make its appearance.  We will get excited on seeing those crocuses and daffodils and tulips.  The days will once again start getting longer.  We won't be able to wait for the real summer, and will wonder and worry when it will be summer.

When summer arrives, we would have forgotten all the miseries of the cold and the rain and the damp and the darkness.  And we will not be ready for the summer to end. But it will.

And then I will see the woolly bears crawling again.

Life.