Fall, You’re Late to the Party

I love seeing people’s pictures of fall on my Instagram and Facebook feeds.  I obsess over chunky, soft sweaters, warm, leather boots, orange and red foliage, and even Starbucks cups filled with pumpkin spiced whatever (even though I am not a coffee drinker, not a Starbucks customer, and not a pumpkin spice fan…).

But, alas, fall is only a season of my dreams because I live in Orlando.

It’s been so dang hot here in Orlando, it’s not even funny.  One day a few weeks ago, we woke up to a morning without humidity and the weather man was all, “LOOKS LIKE A COLD SPELL, PEOPLE!”

No, Rob.  It is not a cold spell.  It’s 90 degrees in the shade, my senile weather man friend.

But tonight!  Oh, tonight!  Tonight it was actually, really, seriously, kind of, almost, could have been a little COOL.  The kids and I sat outside after dinner and soaked up every second of this possibly, maybe, sort of fall-ish weather that we could.

This week in Cub Scouts, we taught the kids how to tie different knots.  Chris gave them all long strips of rope and we practiced knots for a while together.  Tonight, Bean and Gracie took their ropes outside and used those knots to climb trees and possibly break their necks.  Because what is Scouting for, if not for learning 1,000 different ways to harm yourself?

(This next picture is actually a video, if you click on it…  You can see Bean “climb it up very well.”)

Also, please look at our backyard and be furious with me.  This is our neighbor’s tree.  It fell down during the hurricane and is laying across two different neighbor’s houses.  It has now been one month since the storm.

Our neighborhood and community is largely back to normal, except for a few debris piles here and there that are waiting to be picked up by the city.  And yet, we have the ONE neighbor who has not TOUCHED their backyard.  Which means, their fence (which conveniently keeps our dogs in our yard) has not been fixed.  Which means that our dogs get out every time we let them out.

It’s a tricky situation, too, because technically it is their fence and they could totally decide not to put it back up and that would be their call.  But at the same time, we can’t even put up a new fence if we wanted to because of their stupid tree.  So now, it has become a common occurrence to have neighbors show up at our front door with our two dogs standing with them.

“I found them in my backyard.”

“I found them by the pond.”

“I found them standing in my kitchen.”

(Just kidding on that last one… so far…)

Anyway, we are now having to stand outside with them every time they go outside, which annoys us and the dogs.  Especially on nights like this, when the weather is so nice you just want to linger outside.  You know, if you’re a dog.  Big Molly loves nice weather and she hates being rushed.  But tonight, we all wanted to be outside.

Hang in there, Big Molly.  Cooler weather is coming.

And a fence.

Hopefully a fence first.