“Anyway, I liked autumn.  Autumn – the season of new boots.”
– Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married

I am of the of the few, the grumpy, the Perpetually Meteorological Unsatisfied.

In the depths of a Western winter, when I have to dig my car out every day for weeks at a time, I long for spring.  When spring shows up, I tsk at its lack of purpose in waffling back and forth between blizzards and broiling.  As for summer, well, Small Dogs were not meant to be heated (I’m stupidly susceptible to heat stroke and exhaustion).  By all accounts I should be equally aggravated with fall for its schizophrenic weather, but I’m oddly indulgent.  I love fall.  I love the holidays, the new clothes, the cool weather after the sunburned, blistering baking I get June through August.

But I don’t love when Fall teases me with glimpses of cooler weather (relatively, seeing as how we were pushing triple digits here recently) before vanishing until at least October.

It sends me mixed messages.  The temperature dips (for a week) and my brain starts firing.  Sweaters!  Pumpkin in every baked good ever!  Boots!  Halloween!  Hot chocolate every day!  End of summer clothing sales, buy all the things!  College football!  Actually working out regularly because I’m not overheating and getting sick!  Nutmeg!

Then a couple days later I’m literally knocked backwards by the thump of heat that surges inward when I open the door in the morning to go to work.  My brain, which was already planning pies and outfits and pre-winter projects swivels around on itself yelling, “Abort, abort!”