Welcome Home!

The change is subtle but it’s there. When I woke up Monday morning, last week, I had to turn on my bedside lamp for the first time in a long time because it was sort of dark.

Then Thursday morning – when it was only 41 degrees outside – the furnace came on for the first time.

The dusty hot smell, reminiscent of an old toaster, woke me up at 5 a.m.

And so did the cat. With a sense of urgency he pounced on my bed and trampled around on my pillow until I acknowledged that he was there.

“There’s a noise in the basement, a big noise,” his wide-eyed expression said.

“Go back to bed,” I said, burrowed as I was underneath my down comforter. The previous evening I had retired the cotton bedspread for the summer on a tiny notion, a hint, that it would no longer be warm enough.

That same morning my favorite coffee house only opened one of its two big doors, to shield the sleepy line of morning coffee junkies from the cold.

I started searching for matching socks, finding that over summer a dozen singletons have migrated to whereever it is single socks go when they leave their partners. I leave the flip-flops and sandals on the bedroom floor.

You know what I’m talking about: fall is on its way – and I’m sort of looking forward to it.

The crisp mornings, the blue skies.

Sure, we’ll get a few more hot days, and yes, I will miss the heat, but soon we’ll be looking for pumpkins and cabbage to decorate the front steps, and Halloween will be right around the corner.

This fall is rather special for me as I will be leaving the paper, the Home section and the big old scary house for a monthlong trip to Lesotho, a small African country, landlocked inside the nation of South Africa. I’ll be working at a paper there helping out a staff of 10 reporters, who’ve worked at the paper since 1998 but have little or no journalism training.

It’s springtime in Lesotho, but it probably won’t be much warmer than here – especially not at night.

I have so many unanswered questions: how does one live in Lesotho? What does one own? Is life mostly good? What does one grow in a garden?

If you have Internet access, you can follow my exploits at: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/ safrica/

Otherwise, I’m sure a story or two will make it into the regular paper.

While I’m gone, Cheryl-Anne Millsap will fill in for me. My column here will return when I return from Africa in early October.