The propane fireplace, our only heat source, came on for the first time this season on October 17 at 4:55 a.m. The smell woke me. Stench of burning dust - acrid smell of old dead skin accumulated in the iron interstices. Ugh.

October 18. Frost on the lawn. Orange morning light slants across the yellow weedlot, goldbrown poplars behind: it's almost a caricature of autumn, impossibly perfect, best fall ever.

Is it fall because we hurtle from solid safe green bright summer into the dimfreezepit of winter?

We're ready, I think. I think there are down comforters and big white pillows at the bottom.

Yesterday and the day before the local propane purveyors plumbed a T'd pipeline under my house and ran a connection up through a hole in the kitchen floor. Now, where never there has been one before in this tiny former office building, a (very used) secondhand gas stove sits in its kitchen, and last night I cooked our first meal ever here sans hotplate and microwave. I was cookin' with gas. You're all invited here for Thanksgiving.