tl;dr? Let me read it for you.
If ever there were an opposite of a summer person, it is me. Summer is a season of endurance, in which I must cram myself into clothes I don’t feel comfortable in, and hide away in the air conditioning waiting for it to be over.
I’m a fall guy. I love the fall. I love how ominous it sounds: the fall. Autumn’s a pretty good word for it too.
It’s a season of relief, when I can finally put on a hoodie and comfy clothes to enjoy a fire on chilly nights, while the days are still warm enough to open the windows or get outside. I love the crispness of the air. The liminality of the atmosphere as nature prepares for the long sleep, and the deep, dark shadows cast by a sun sinking lower on the horizon. The promise of it is the only thing that gets me through the grueling days of summer.
Above all things, I love Halloween. Three years ago, when my husband and I were ready to move out of the growing bustle of downtown Denver, the prospect of a quiet house in the woods of New England, with its stunning fall foliage in the spookiest corner of the country, was an easy sell for us.
Over the years, I’ve let my love for Halloween and “the fall” creep, pushing the decorations further and further up the calendar until it consumed Thanksgiving and Christmas. In place of Santa and reindeer, I had ghosts and skeletons dressed up in pretty lights and frosted snowflakes: “Spookmas”.
This year, in the ultimate act of terrorism upon summertime, I declared it “Summerween”, dragging my ghosts all the way back to July. I even found this awesome inflatable pumpkin pool and watched summer slasher movies in the sun.
So why is it that now, as we enter the final days of summer, am I so bummed to see it go? Why does the idea of putting up Halloween decorations this year fill me with dread? To the point that now I’m the one annoyed with people like me.
The obvious conclusion would be that I found a way to make summer not miserable for myself via Summerween, but truthfully, I’m overselling how much Summerweening I actually did. It was a thing I started, enjoyed for a day or two, but ultimately found… I didn’t need it?
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