Doodaddy

San Francisco’s combined fall and winter hit today with a chilly fog up here in the western wilds. The fog at the playground was so cold that even Boo volunteered to put on her jacket — an event I was hardly ready for, since it’s so rare.

A somewhat disturbing visual, I know

Alas! The jacket wasn’t for her — she just wanted to protect medium-sized dolly, pictured. (I swear that’s what she calls it.)

Never one to pass up a chance to play at infintilism, Boo immediately asked to crawl inside my jacket, making a medium-sized-dolly-sandwich.

And then we tried to ride the swing together. Not a great arrangement:

Me: “Did I just whack your face into the chain?”

Boo: “Yeah.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“That’s OK.”

The first cold weather of the season scares kid people away; we had the playground entirely to ourselves. After a week of a grandma staying in the house and dozens of relations and friends calling to visit the new baby sister, Boo was a little flubbergusted by the sudden absence of interesting company. (Which means anybody other than me.)

At moments, the change of the seasons gets to me, too. Just after dark, for one, when the windows go black and I’m desperately trying to declutter a house that magnetically attracts junk, getting some pathetic dinner ready, and keeping a toddler entertaining herself — that’s when the thought involuntarily floats in: “Really? Is this it?”

The buried-under feeling is short-lived, though, and shorter as I get older. I just don’t have time for the affected melancholy of my 20s, and besides, it’s not long before the dinner is eaten, Working Mom is nursing the Blueberry, and Boo and I are dancing to Wizard of Oz songs. (I have to tape her singing “The house began to pitch and the witch on her broomstick-thumb-for-a-hitch.” You’ll die.)

San Francisco’s gotten a little cold and we’ve huddled up into our cave with our new baby. We’ve still got our humor, and Thanksgiving around the corner, and Technicolor munchkins.

Now if only some of them would show up at the playground.