How’s your weekend going? I saw a sign in a shop today—a quirkily illustrated poster with the words ‘have a marvelous day!’ scrawled across the top. It showed 12 hand-drawn squares, each depicting something to marvel at: the scent of roses in a flower shop, a hot cup of coffee, the sun on your face.

I liked the reminder of what the word can be—not just excellent or fantastic but related to stopping and marveling at something (especially little things). How nice to wander through the world with a healthy dose of wonder: willing and ready and looking to be surprised or delighted or both.

The party dessert platter. You know what I’m talking about. The dessert platter I mean is not a gorgeous spread of irresistible pastries, but rather a catering essential that feels like an afterthought. It shows up at these kinds of gatherings: an after-school soccer team celebration, a piano recital reception, a working lunch with clients, a buffet-style cocktail party. The platter in question is usually on a shiny black plastic tray lined with a paper doily. It sports an array of baked goods—squares of brownies, lemon bars showered in powdered sugar, and slices of pound cake. It suffers from what I call the “Starbucks pastry effect”—it looks inviting, but the second you bite into any one of the desserts, you realize your mistake. Dry. Overly sweet. Pretty tasteless.

The leaves are slowly turning color. I drove up to Vermont last week and woke up to a 40-degree day: bright and crisp and cold. The air stung my lungs as I walked to my car, breathing in the smell of fall.

Tomorrow is Halloween, and is forecast to be 70 degrees in New York, so maybe I’ll dress up as a very pale person trying to get a tiny late season suntan HA. I like the changing of the seasons so much. It makes my heart swell every time, every year. As soon as I sense the bellwether of seasonal shifts—a whiff of woodsmoke drifting lazily through the breeze, the sign saying “hot apple cider” at the coffee shop, the feel of a flannel shirt—and all the accumulated memories of that season rush back to me.