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.

An interesting week behind us here at the Old Same Place. Some disappointments, some confusions, but much accomplished and a lot of love thrown into the bargain.

It was a record-setter for sleep and dreams. I slept easily (hooray!) and woke early to write down several every morning - vivid, detailed, atmospheric dreams that all the same (and in the maddening way of dreams) defied description except in skeletal particulars.

In a lengthy one from last night my Grandma Erma grudgingly bought me a queen-sized bed with stereo and TV built into the foot of it. When the policemen (?) delivered it to my room they wondered how I could live in such a decrepit joint - ancient-of-days linoleum bits clinging to exposed weathered wood, peelingwallpapered walls full of holes that let the weather - and wildlife - in. I laughed and said I'd grown up in just such a room and found it comforting. I especially liked the little lizards who visited: I greeted a little green gecko poking his head in high on the wall.

In other dreams I moved to New York again and again, and again and again was ripped off by scamming real estate agents and scheming thieves. I took hikes along dusty trails and encountered soldiers playing war games. Walked a gauntlet of loitering menaces alone in a latenight city park. Phoned Billy Idol while on a date with James Marsters (Spike!), who teased my hair into a beautiful bouffant.

Anyway, I do not want for material this week.

In the brick-and-mortar world, the bookselling business is great. I have almost 500 titles posted online and sales have made possible little improvements: I got a filling in a molar, and the exposed plywood on the roof of my house has been shingled over, and the propane guys are going to plumb for a stove on Monday. (A stove! No more hotplates!) On the other hand, Husband had to rescue me from an unpaid water bill, and I argued with the storage people to have their lien-lock removed. All our winter clothes are in there and my payment wasn't that late.

I gave up on the garden tomatoes and pulled the plants up, heavyladen with green orbs as they were. The nights were down in the 20s F. all last week and there was no hope. They ripen in the trailer now, slowly slowly on the vine. We have yet to taste one. It was a weird year for tomatoes.

I leave you know. Time for work.

It's very very autumn out there.