counting shooting stars.

"The first stars tremble as if shimmering in green water. Hours must pass before their glimmer hardens into the frozen glitter of diamonds. I shall have a long wait before I witness the soundless frolic of the shooting stars. In the profound darkness of certain nights I have seen the sky streaked with so many trailing sparks that it seemed to me a great gale must be blowing through the outer heavens." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

My entire week has felt like late afternoon on a school day. You know the feeling? When it's lazy and relaxed, without very much to do besides read and drink beverages much too hot for the weather.

It's stifling hot and vibrantly green here. I'm so ready for fall. I've looked over my posts from last fall several times. They only make me wish October would come quickly. In no particular order, here are the things I'm ready for about fall:

-jeans and boots.
-the leaves.
-the weather.
-apple cider.
-soccer season. (no, I don't play, I watch.) (speaking of soccer, Barcelona and Manchester is tonight!)
-You've Got Mail.
-picking apples.
-youth group. I. Miss. It.

Regardless of how ready I am for fall, summer is beautiful.

In the month that I was gone, two of my best friends went to Central Asia, and my younger sister, best friend since birth, went to Colorado. The four of us reunited on Thursday. There's a tradition we started last summer when I returned from Jordan that we've continued throughout this summer. We drive over to my grandma's house. She has a bunkhouse on the edge of her pond that we sleep in. It was perfect this time. The water in the pond was much warmer than it was earlier in the summer, and we had an entire month of stories to catch up on. Anna starts school in a week, the earliest of the four of us, so we have time for roughly two more sleepovers out there.

We watched the stars for a long time. I saw approximately six shooting stars, not counting the airplanes are fireflies. Have you ever done that, faked a shooting star? I think that if you stare at the sky for long enough you start to imagine them there when they really aren't.

I wish you could have seen how heavy the sky was with stars that night. It was so bright out, I'm not even sure how to describe it. About stars:

There's a line in a Regina Spektor song that I really love. It goes like this, "Beneath the stars came falling on our heads/ But they're just old light."

Have you ever thought about that? That the stars we see at night might not even be there any more? I very quickly googled this just to make sure that it's correct, and from what I saw, it is. The nearest star takes four years for its light to reach us. Four years. By the time we're seeing a star, it's just "old light."

So yes, the sky was covered with old light on Wednesday night. There were layers and layers of stars fading out to the edges of the horizon. Night is gorgeous.

I've been reading my way through the various books I brought home from the library this week. Yesterday and today have been J.D. Salinger, specifically the Catcher in the Rye (yesterday) & Franny and Zooey (today). 

Tomorrow and Monday will be Madeleine L'Engle, Tuesday and Wednesday will be the miscellaneous leftovers. What, you don't plan the books you're going to read? 

I've been to the library twice since I've been home, unusual for our family. Normally we go once every two weeks, and I stock up on enough to last me for a while. I love going so often. 

Miss Annie sent me a notebook in the mail a few days ago. It was a really good day, but I think her unexpected package took the cake. This is number three in my collection of Eiffel Tower journals, and I like how different they are while still containing such an iconic structure. 

So tell me: what are you looking forward for most in fall? Do you have any favorite summer traditions? What's an incredible book that you've read recently? And lastly, was there something unexpected about your week that made it just a little bit happier?