Suck It, September

Well September, it’s been great but October is around the corner and I have to say, I’m not sad to see you go. Yes, I know. You’ve given me cool mornings and blue-sky afternoons and the return of college football and Honeycrisp apples.

It’s not you. It’s me.

You see, you are supposed to be the start of my new year, my renaissance, my reawakening after the never-ending carpools/play dates/snack bar dinners that make up my summer. On that first day when I take, and then post, the nostalgic photo of my kids’ backs as they walk into school and the door slams shut behind them, my life is supposed to restart. Instead, I once again define insanity and convince myself that repeating the same actions will result in a different ending.

Because every year, as soon as you roll around, my fine fall harbinger, I truly believe I will get back on schedule. Back to my regular workouts, long-postponed doctor’s appointments and maybe a solo trip to Target. I start dreaming about a decadent afternoon at the spa. I fantasize about me, my computer and more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted writing time. I start eyeing my dusty to-do list.

But that’s not how you roll, is it September. No, my tricky little tease, you throw in a few holidays to ensure that there isn’t a full week of school until sometime just before Columbus Day. So instead of getting my groove back, I schedule orthodontist appointments and haircuts and ignore the mall legs of reluctant children (you know, when they drag their feet really slowly because they are sooooo tired?) to take the number 31 ticket at the Nordstrom shoe department just as they are announcing that they are helping number 6.

And even that doesn’t satisfy you, most sadistic of months (well, June gives you a run for your money, but she’s dead to me now). Because you take pleasure in ensuring that each of my children’s activities has a staggered start date. So just as homework ramps up “now that the kids have gotten the hang of things” and right about the same time as the Back-to-School nights start, we experience, for the first time, the full impact of merging the schedule streams.

Oh, don’t play coy. You know that means that there will be a week during which I will misread every recipe, skipping the part that says the “quick” one pot dinner has to simmer for 75 minutes or the meat needs to marinate overnight in the fridge. And I will realize, belatedly, that one child has to be picked up from dance at exactly the same time as, but in a different town than, her brother, who has his music lesson in a warehouse at the back of a poorly lit, almost deserted, industrial complex, and who has left his phone at home. And I will discover that the kid I thought we were going to carpool with for soccer practice has decided to take up the ukulele instead. And, I will have scheduled my yearly mammogram during the first gymnastics practice and a client meeting during my library duty. I will limp to the end of this week, tired and hangry, cursing and shaking my fist at the sky, vowing that I will never be fooled by you again, seductive September.

I know your type, September and I’ve got my eye on you. So just take your shenanigans and go elsewhere. I’ll bet all those people who have been in school since August would gratefully welcome you with open arms. I mean, who wouldn’t looove the month in which they had a Fall Break? Even though it’s still technically summer. But what can you expect from people who start their Summer Break in the spring? So I blame them, not only for your rave reviews but also for the fact that Halloween candy and ski parkas show up in stores before Labor Day. Its false fall, I tell you.

So listen September, I can’t usually stay mad at you for long. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. Like around February when all those other people are taking Spring Break and I am in the frozen tundra, backing my van into the snowdrift across the street whenever I leave my driveway.

But for now, it’s time for you to piss off. And take the eighty-degree weather and the falling acorns with you. But leave the Honeycrisps. I like them.