September

It's here.  It is September and summer will soon be just a fleeting memory.

What do a mean soon?  It's already fluttering away!  Somehow we have reached the 9th month of the year and I don't know where the summer has gone.  There were weeks where my son was away at camp.  There were weeks where he was at the NJ shore.  Yet, I can barely remember him being gone (although I missed him like crazy at the time.)  There were days at the beach. There were sailboat races on Barnegat Bay. Where did it all go?

We're entering the season of Pumpkin Spice.  I LOVE the pumpkin spice!  (But that's a whole other blog post...the joys and many variations of pumpkin spice.)  Days that already were not very hot, will start to cool down.  Although we're bound to get some scorchers in the middle of the month when no one really quite expects it and when the kids are all settled back into school.

How can it be September?  Wasn't it just the last day of school; the first day of summer?  How can the 4th of July be just a memory?  (And why didn't I watch 1776 this year?  Surely we couldn't have had a July 4th without watching 1776.)

Yet here it is.  It is September.  It means a new school year.  It means warm days and cools nights with gentle breezes blowing and no noisy air conditioners.  It means leaves will start to turn colors.  And at the end of the month Halloween decorations will appear on my lawn.  (Despite the fact that Halloween "stuff" appeared in the stores in mid-August, my son has long decreed that decorations cannot go up until the end of the month.  And then, reluctantly they quickly come down as we brace ourselves for Thanksgiving.)

It is time for apple picking and the fresh smell of cinnamon apples.  It means that Mallomars will once again appear on the shelves of the grocery stores and I will buy as many as possible when they go on sales because I'm not paying some outrageous price for  box of them, despite the fact that I love them.  Mallomars go well with pumpkin spice coffee you know!

January may be the official start of the New Year, but September is also a time of new beginnings.  As we close the door on the summer and welcome in the colors of fall.  As we acclimate ourselves to a new school year -- even if we don't have kids in school.  (Because everyone gets stuck behind a school bus sometime! How much can being stuck behind a school bus mess up your commute?)

September:  you are here.  Once again you snuck up on me.  I am not quite ready for you.  Yet here you are.  You are September.