Yesterday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, just like Alexander had in the Judith Viorst book that was one of my son’s favorite books when he was little. The only difference — and it is significant — is that Alexander actually had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He woke up with chewing gum in his hair, he tripped over things, he didn’t get a prize from his cereal box, his dentist found a cavity in his mouth, and so forth. You get it. He had a bad day.

I actually didn’t have a bad day, but was incredibly crabby nonetheless. The last time I cried as often for no apparent reason, I was 12 years old and my mom desperately explained the female reproductive process to me figuring I was going to get my period any second. Bill didn’t try explaining the facts of life to me; he just went up into our bedroom, closed the door, and worked on replacing drywall where the window installers had removed it, humming loudly.

I finally owned up to my crabbiness in the afternoon when I was reading my daily Nextdoor post. Many of you might recognize that Nextdoor is a nationwide social networking site for neighborhoods. Its goal, I think, is to allow courteous discussions among neighbors, including restaurant recommendations, recommendations for services such as plumbers and painters, alerts as to issues in the neighborhood, and so forth. At least once a day — and usually more — I receive a Nextdoor feed with interesting information.

I mostly like Nextdoor. It has been useful to me on a number of occasions. One day when I was in AZ, I got a Nextdoor alert that there was a water main break in our Denver neighborhood. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was right in front of our house. I was able to alert friends and family, who checked to make sure our house was not impacted. That’s pretty cool, considering I was 900 miles away.

I have also used it to obtain recommendations on such things as hair stylists and house painters. Two thumbs up!

Yesterday, I got a notice from a Nextdoor neighbor that shots had been heard at 2 o’clock yesterday morning in our ‘hood. Have you ever played Pixie Stix? You know, the game where you pull out plastic sticks from a pile one-by-one until finally the pile collapses. Well, the Nextdoor notice about gunshots was that final plastic stick.

Why-oh-why do people hear gunshots so often in our neighborhood? It’s reported on Nextdoor so frequently that you would think we live on the south side of Chicago with Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. And why does everyone else hear them and I never do? Me, whose sleep pattern is so messed up these days that I hear when my neighbor flushes her toilet!

Well, practically.

The fact that I was so very annoyed by this poor woman’s concern that she heard gunshots (which I’m convinced was not gunshots but simply fireworks given that things always seem worse at night) demonstrates just how cranky I was yesterday. It rather brought me to my senses.

Here’s what I did. I looked at these photos…..

…..and then I turned on television and watched Midsommer Murders.

And I felt better.

Today is a good day.

When we bought our Denver house back in 1992, we had a pear tree, a cherry tree, and three apple trees in our back yard, and a decorative crabapple tree in our front yard. The cherry tree had to be cut down quite soon after we moved in because it was dying. The crabapple tree was sacrificed shortly after simply because Bill got tired of having to pick up little useless crabapples from the ground.  However, the other trees have been quite healthy, until this year when it became apparent that one of our three apple trees looks to be quite sickly. I’m hoping we can save it, but it might have to go.

Some years we have pears and apples and some years we don’t. I think it often has something to do with how and if the trees were pollinated. Often it is a direct result of the trees blossoming and then a winter storm killing the flowers.

I will be perfectly honest: neither Bill nor I are ever very sad when the trees don’t bear fruit. It’s hard to keep up with the harvesting, and more apples and pears end up on the ground becoming sour than are ever actually picked and used.

This year we knew we were going to get fruit. The trees were bursting with blossoms this past spring and we didn’t have the typical late freeze. All summer long I have watched our trees — and particularly the pear tree — grow fruit. Week by week, the fruit got larger. Cole, in particular, loved checking out the apples and pears every time he came to visit to see if they were ready to eat. His little teeth nearly fell out in July when he tried hard to bite into a pear.

Finally, about a week ago, he pronounced the fruit ready to eat. He proudly displayed the apples he had picked, with bites out of each. I admitted that they looked ready.

I never have trouble figuring out what to do with the apples. I have a wonderful recipe for an apple cake that was one of my mother’s favorites which I included in this blog post.

It’s the pears that stump me every single year. Here’s why: I have learned from trial and error and my BFF Google that you don’t wait until they are ripe to harvest pears. By that time, they have fallen to the ground and been consumed by squirrels or other four-or -six legged (or more) critters. Instead, you have to figure out exactly when it is time to pick them, then store them in a cool, dry spot and let them ripen in the box.

Despite knowing all of the above, I never have quite gotten it right. The closest I came was one year when I was able to make a batch of pear butter (which has a consistency of applesauce so I am wholly unclear as to why it isn’t referred to as pearsauce) from pears that had fallen on the ground but not yet been spotted by other critters. Every other year one of two things has happened: 1) the pears have rotted on the tree; or 2) I picked them, put them in a box, set the pears in the basement for ripening, and forgot about them until June.

This year, however, the McLain kids came over to help us harvest the pears…..

In their Sunday-Go-to-Meetin’ Clothes, nonetheless. I was pretty strict. The big ones go in the box; the little ones get tossed in the garbage…..

Maggie Faith, being a little one herself, suffered a broken heart about the little ones’ fate.

We didn’t quite complete the job, it being 90 degrees and all. But we got a few in the box, and I picked enough apples to make an apple crisp.

Fall is in the air.