WTF is up with Fall? And by that I mean when did the season of autumn become an event? Did I miss something? My daughter has had her face painted EVERY weekend since Labor Day.

When I was a kid we each got a pumpkin for carving, we hung some Indian corn on our door, we spent one day trick or treating and then we hunkered down and waited for Christmas. Now it seems that suddenly the entire months of September, October and November have become a giant pumpkin eating hayride of harvest festivities.

And what really makes me stay up at night* is what came first, did I miss some kind of universal change in humanity when sometime in the mid aughts everyone woke up craving pumpkin flavored pastries and the opportunity to pick their own apples? Or did one group of farmers accidently plant so many pumpkins** one year that they were forced to conspire with bakeries and Starbucks across the country to get rid of their product?

Either way it happened I am fascinated by it and how everyone seems to be on board. Nary a weekend has gone by where someone hasn’t texted me with “you want to go pick some apples on Saturday?” and the thing is I like to go apple picking, I like being out in an orchard when the trees are turning and the smell of apple ciders in the air and all of that, but it’s really easy to pick apples ( I mean on a small scale, I certainly wouldn’t want to do it for a living) while meandering down rows of loaded apple trees dropping those within easy arms reach inside of a paper Trader Joe’s bag I can gather enough apples to get my family of three through the winter in about 10-15 minutes. So why do I need to go apple picking every single weekend? Maybe I can set up some kind of 2^nd run apple stand for people who are too lazy to get in their cars and drive to an orchard to lift up their arms? I don’t know maybe I’m on to something here, but I feel like the people who invented grocery stores might have already figured out this business model.

Also, while we are on the subject of seasonal festivals, why just fall? Why not have spring festivals and summer festivals and maybe one smack dab in the middle of Winter, I feel like that would really help people get through February if the entire month was devoted to “Mid Winter Fiesta!” we could use the old apples that never gotten eat from all of the apple picking in fall to make mulled apple cider, or maybe we could just throw them at snowmen as we primal scream to let out our frustration that its only fucking February (with sparklers, cause nothing says Mid Winter Fiesta like apple chucking and sparklers).

*This is a lie, nothing keeps me up at night (except maybe an ill timed double espresso) I’m so tired that by 10:00 rolls around I couldn’t stay awake even if the house caught on fire and I was forced to leave. I’d probably just stay in bed shouting “tell me family I love them!”

** This is easier than you would think. Watermelon and pumpkin vines look a lot alike. This past spring I planted both of them in my garden and around the first of August my husband excitedly told me one day that our first watermelon was growing big and nearly ready to be picked. A few weeks later he picked and (fortunately) before cutting into it examined the underside and realized that it was orange, it wasn’t a watermelon at all but a not-yet-ripe pumpkin. See, if it can happen to us it can happen to anyone.