The Cheater and The Chocolate

Fall is a Cheat.

It’s cheating me out of floating around in my inner tube and wearing t-shirts outside and walking around barefoot. Cheating me out of sandwiches with pickles and wasabi mayo. Cheating me out of early morning walks with the dogs.

The deck umbrellas are put away and the inflatable hot tubs get all set up and you go camping just to enjoy a campfire and drink hot tea. Then you come home and can’t stand the smell of the campfire on your clothes and you strip down in the laundry room and toss everything in the washer before you even go upstairs to take a shower.

But…all the browns and yellows and oranges that I love. Tablecloths and wreaths and placemats and fake scarecrows that you buy for ten bucks at the craft store. Burlap and porcelain pumpkins and squashes and baskets. And bad third-grade jokes that you still remember.

‘If April showers bring May flowers, what do mayflowers bring?’

‘Pilgrims’.

Fall only lasts about three minutes around here, so you’ve got to somehow squeeze in both the Candy Dance AND the trip to Apple Hill to get your pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Hot pumpkin buttered rum and maple-bourbon chai tea toddies occupy your brain. Hot Salted Caramel Apple Cider and hot vanilla milk and hot white Russian cocktails and the spiked chamomile tea that makes your breath awful.

And all the hot chocolates you could imagine:

Bourbon-spiked and peppermint and blackberry and caramel and hazelnut. Cayenne and cinnamon and strawberry and red velvet and cookies-and-cream. And tons and tons of whipped cream on top. And marshmallows. And sprinkles.

All the sugar just waiting to attach itself to your thighs. Spring is so far away now that you don’t care how your bathing suit feels about you because all the delicious yum-yums are everywhere.

Overeating and chocolate and pumpkin-spiced-everything and cinnamon sticks with orange slices and cloves simmering on the stove. Big socks that don’t fit quite right in your shoes and scarves that don’t really keep you warm but they sure look good. New jackets because the other six you have are out of style. Accepting the cold to avoid going to work with hat-head.

Our three-minute Fall showed up yesterday and it’s too cold to eat breakfast outside and the yellow jackets want your eggs and bacon anyway and you don’t feel like carrying your Epi-pen to breakfast.

The owls hoot-hooting and the sunflowers with heads so heavy, they stare at the ground all day. The birds are all empty-nesters now, their kids off to college. They cry a little in the evening when they’re lonely. The hummingbirds already cleared out the sugary non-alcoholic margarita mixer we made for them.

So maybe Fall isn’t a cheat. Maybe Summer warmly hands off the world to Fall to save up her energy for next year. To make us grateful for her warmth and love when she returns.

Come to think of it, I do love the Fall.