The smells weren't right in this place.

No, the newish smell of plywood mixed with the clippings of suburban lawn did nothing to make this large empty house seem like home. The house itself, with its picture perfect architecture and trendy faςade seemed to focus its disdainful stare at me the moment I walked through the front door.

No, home around this time is supposed to smell of Fall--of brown gold leaves crunching underfoot or burning in piles, of apple cider, of old wood. It is supposed to smell of cold, the first bite in the air that tickles the nose a bit as it teases of snowflakes and sled rides.

Here in the South in October, where the temperature still hovers between 80-90° Fahrenheit, there is a sad suburban sameness that seems to spread like the plague to places that were once beautiful and wild. Once I heard a song that seems to describe this phenomenon:

Little Boxes
by Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of tickytacky
Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

I am hoping and praying that Olympia shows me something different than this endless cycle.