The wind is harder. The leaves have lost their color and grown crunchy. The mornings have a chill. The evenings, on the quiet ones, you can almost hear the thermometer giving a great sigh. It gets dark early, so a quick walk right after work looks like this.

It’ll get worse for another month and change, but then the solstice brings the first hint of a distant reprieve. The next day is longer! By a minute! And 10 days later the coldest month begins. It’ll already be cold, and dark, and gray, though. In truth, while something on me — my toes or ears or fingers — will always be cold, the actual temps will rightfully be considered mild by some. Winter is relative, but it is a constant, much like my whining about it. And it’ll stay that way until April.

My electric blanket is ready.

I will keep it out of the snow, which is due in on Saturday morning.

All of the signs suggest a hard winter, he said, writing on one of the last two days of wonderful, mild weather. The caterpillars with seasonal setae are suggesting it — because caterpillars know things. Even social media is suggesting it. As if you needed another reason to put a pause on social media.

Anyway, we went on a little walk into the gloaming, which ended in the proper darkness. You’d think that this would change the sort of conversation that you have with someone — like it’d be more whimsical or unguarded or dreamlike — but not really. It was the usual normal of nerdy.

The real difference is that we had our first instance of “How is it only nine o’clock?”

Six months ago, and six months hence, it’ll just be getting dark about that time. But, for a time, I can reacquaint myself with more indoor hobbies.

They’ve really been piling up.

I said to myself that, this year, I would not go crazy posting leave photos. How cliche. How ephemeral. How incomplete a reflection of the season. How pretty.

That tree is one I never see, because I had to be on a different part of campus today. I had to be on a different part of campus today because a product is being micromanaged. But my part of this particular project is done now. So I spent the afternoon in the more familiar building, doing the more familiar things, and saw more familiar leaves on the way out.

That red maple in the early morning light was nice, but these sweetgums are showing off.

There’s a parking deck on one side of these trees, and some tired campus rental houses on the other side. For a few weeks in October, though, nobody notices all of that. They’re looking up at this.

At the end of the day it was back out to the UPS Store to return something. We watched a young woman hand the UPS desk clerk a bag of clothing. No, that’s not exactly right. She handed her one item from the bag at a time, and the desk clerk was bagging and putting stickers on each individual item. It must have been a good week for that young woman on Poshmark. And a good day for UPS if there’s someone willing to pay you to wad up that shirt, put it in a clear back, slap a sticker on it and add that to the pile of yoga pants and blouses you’ve already packaged for her.

This took about five minutes. She had a lot of clothes to ship.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that young woman’s personal economy.

We then visited the not-Publix. One needs produce, after all. Peppers and onions and apples, a little thing of coconut milk, why not. Some pizzas for a quick snack. And then to checkout, with little incident.

We use the self checkout aisle, of course. I always say that you should have to pass a test and get a license to use the self checkout. But it occurred to me this evening that I’d have to pass that test as well. And the poor impatient people behind me might think me unworthy at this whole thing, too. The self checkout monitor, responsible for six stations, was as unflappable as ever. And by unflappable I mean unimpressed. Which is to say, busy staring at her phone.

“Help is on the way,” seems like an Isaac Asimov subplot gone awry.

Anyway, that was the day. Nine hours at the office. Barely two of it at my desk. And then two stores and now the house, those leaves and still, still, waiting on the weekend.

She did great, but today got out of control in a hurry.

Much like when the driver of the red pickup truck cut off my wife and caused her to crash her bike at about 25 miles per hour.

This morning, one doctor’s office visit and an X-ray turned into a surgical consult. We’d been hoping that the collarbone would settle itself down, but the past week, the relaxation of the muscles and all of that, have actually shown the true extent of the problem. The first doctor was — what was that reaction? Appalled, Stunned? Crestfallen? — a bit shaken by today’s X-ray. What the pictures said was that surgery is the right answer. Avoiding surgery, at this point, is a game of chance, but, really, delaying the inevitable.

The doctor says, “I’ll let you think about it.”

Not that there’s much to think about, really. Young and active and planning on staying that way, the best outcome is the one you want. That’s definitely surgery. The surgical outcome is far more controlled. But, for a week, she’d been hoping to avoid that.

It’s funny, you spend a week trying to will something to happen, gritting through terrible pain, and then one photo that makes the point, clear as day. The space between the bone fragments was large enough to write “surgery” in a substantial font.

I’m not sure how many sentences we’d gotten into the subsequent “think about it” conversation when he came back into the exam room.

“Have you eaten anything today?”

And that was when the day turned into a sprint. If there’s a surgery, someone should come into town to help out. Her mom will be on the next plane. We need to get her from the airport. Arrangements made. Arrangements changed.

There needs to be some straightening up around the house, then. New sheets on the guest bed. Floors vacuumed. Room made in the closet. Extra bathroom opened. Coffee purchased. And and and. I’m also still in a quixotic campaign to get her painkiller prescription refilled.

The surgical center called. There had been a cancellation, can we come even earlier? We could and we did. There was scarcely time to think or react. We just did, all day. Maybe it is better that way. Less thinking and worrying and fretting.

Because there hasn’t been enough of that in the last week.

And so I found myself sitting in the foyer between the waiting room and the carport of the surgical center, answering work email, because that’s what important right then, I guess. What else was I going to do?

She did great and she’s doing great. But that’s why there’s not more here.

But don’t forget: Catober begins this weekend.