We’re a week into August. The big box stores have put up their Back To School displays. Heck, my parking permit for the fall quarter at Santa Rosa Junior College just showed up. The buckeye maples along River Road between Northwood golf course and Summer Crossing are starting to let a few harbinger leaves fall through the shafts of the golden, already-shifting, late afternoon sunlight. Let’s face it, today we are closer to the fall equinox (46 days) than we are to the summer solstice (47 days). Summer, my friends, is waning.

This year I feel like summer snuck up on me. Part of it is I decided not to plant a garden. The daily growth and weeding and picking and eventual die-back provide something of a visual calendar for the growing season stretching from late spring into the balmy Indian summer days. When the season opened I felt I didn’t have the time or money to plant this year, so I didn’t. I do miss it, though.

Another reason for distraction was preparing for – and going on – my summer roadtrip which I still haven’t written up. It’s coming, I promise. If for no other reason than to revisit the pictures and experiences. Ah, so much fun. If I could, I’d go again tomorrow. And look! It’s only supposed to be 111° on Death Valley’s floor tomorrow! Fall is even coming to the desert!

I know a lot of it missing summer is due to working six days a week, but that’s nothing new. And, realizing that’s nothing new? That’s a lot of what brings me here to this post.

Being busy isn’t new. In fact, it’s a pretty lousy excuse, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, whenever I see those “Michelangelo only had 24 hours in a day. What’s your excuse?” posts I want to slap someone. This isn’t that. But it has been something of a wake-up call to enjoy the hell out of the season that’s left.

Potius sero quam nunquam. Better late than never.

I started Weight Watchers about a month ago and it’s been good so far. One of the things it’s pushed me to do is enjoy my outdoor workouts. The towel and swimsuit in the picture are a result of my fantastic workout in the river yesterday. In the spirit of saying something out loud gives it a better chance of coming true, I’m hoping to hit my other two favorite summer time workouts this week – the east ridge trail at Armstrong Woods, and the Howarth park/Spring Lake loop. Both feel so much a part of my Sonoma County life, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to use them to get into better shape. I went to the gym two weeks ago and genuinely felt a little guilty after I finished my workout and stepped out of the air conditioned building into the bright, hot sunlight. Fall and its shorter days are creeping closer with every day. When outdoor exercise after work becomes inevitably untenable, then I’ll return to the gym. Until then…

One of the interesting aspects of tracking my weight each week has been revisiting my spreadsheet. Back in 2005 Anna started tracking her weight and, in a move of solidarity, I followed suit. But I also realized it’s data! As such, I started logging it in a spreadsheet because of course I did. My relationship with my weight has varied since then from idle speculation to outright denial, and as such, the data points are far from regular. Back in that first year the line graph shows detailed, jagged resolution (oh yeah, of course I graphed it!) but there’s some years where I logged my weight exactly twice, and the line gracefully swoops from one point to the next. The line arcs upwards in late 2012, and by mid-2013 it crosses into heretofore uncharted weight territory and kept going up. This slope coincides, not coincidentally, with the first agonizing death throes of my marriage. The summit was reached late last year and my denial plateaued for a few months. I weighed myself at the beginning of the year and then left it until I joined Weight Watchers four weeks ago and I pleasantly discovered I managed to unwittingly engineer a rather precipitous drop — attributing it to excessive perspiration working in the sun on the weekend, I’ve taken to refer to this drop as “The Sweatening”. Over the last few weeks I’ve continued to lose in fits and starts, and it has been amusing to track the receding weight against its rise, like my weight is time traveling — two weeks ago I was weighing May 2015 and Monday I had reverted back to my birthday in 2014. Here’s hoping this Monday I’m weighing younger still.

Looking at my weight this way serves another purpose: it reinforces the idea that I didn’t put it on all at once, and it’s not going to come off all at once. But it’s starting. Maybe I had to learn something during that rise? I’m pretty confident I did. But the process has begun, and you know what? Better late than never.