There’s just something about a morning like this one.

Maybe it’s the thick layer of frost that makes everything glisten in the sunlight.

It’s officially fall here in Ontario (or at least in my neck of the Ontario woods) which means chilly nights and chilly mornings which means that everyone needs a new set of warmer sheets and a new pair of pajamas or two. It also means that chimneys all over the county are puffing out smoke first thing in the morning and late at night. In between the air is clear with no trails of grey or white smoke marking up the blue sky. In between, it’s still fairly warm. And the sun warms up the house enough to avoid stoking a fire all day.

Maybe it’s the colors of the leaves. It seems to be a most unbelievably beautiful fall this year but then again, maybe I just forgot how gorgeous autumn is, as I seem to do every year. Regardless, it’s stellar. And I find myself losing track of whatever little thing was on my mind as I stand and stare at the orange and red and yellow and brown.

There’s just something about a morning like this one.

The leaves falling rapidly to the earth with each breeze of cold autumn air. The girls bundled up in Target fall jackets. The boy with a blue Relic from the Beachcombers style hat to protect his little ears. Me feeling too fat for the brick colored fleece hoodie I’m supposed to be using for a fall jacket and choosing instead to wrap the six year old black men’s fleece jacket whose zipper has been fucked for at least a year around myself. Our breath looking like smoke. The frost so thick the girls mistook it for snow.

It made me feel renewed.

And so we head into phase two.

I don’t expect anyone to be reading this. And I don’t blame a single one of you. The longer I was away, the harder it was to come back. A few days. A few weeks. A month. The time ticked by and the more I was convinced that I had left MyBloggers for good. I started a few new blogs on other sites (don’t bother looking for them…I used a different blogging name and only posted an introduction, at most…) because the urge to write was still there. Actually, I never really stopped writing…it’s just that most of the words never left the confines of my little brain.

But this morning…

Well, this morning I knew it was time to kick it again. Start releasing the words, hope they make sense at least on a fucked up level, and join the living once again. This is the furthest I’ve retreated in a long, long time. I’ve been completely self absorbed. And it’s been a busy and hectic and wonderful but scary month here in Janet Land, to say the least. The wheels are in motion, as they say. And the changes are happening rapidly and the Universe is shifting to support them, even though it often has seemed just like the opposite is true.

I can’t even hope to catch up on any of your blogs. I think I’ll just pretend that I’m new around here and start reading from the most recent point. But for what it’s worth… I’ve missed you.

So, if anyone IS out there reading my ramblings, welcome to phase two of my blog. Or maybe it’s actually phase three since MyBloggers was a continuation of Blogster. Well, whatever. The point is at the end of the retreat, I realized I didn’t need to start a new blog someplace else. Instead, it was time to come home.

And you know what?

It feels good.