Enjoying My Pie

An Essay about The Weather

Being on the back end of summer is a bittersweet time for me. On the one hand, fall is right around the corner and boy am I a sucker for Football, Chili w/ peanut butter sandwiches, pumpkin pie scented candles, and not having to use Gold Bond every time I check the mail. On the other hand, I sure will miss tomato sandwiches, watching all my teacher-friends get day drunk on a weekday, and most importantly, not wearing sleeves. I genuinely don’t think I’ve worn sleeves since April, and you can really tell when you look at me. My shoulders, arms, and legs are a wonderful hue of brown. Almost a crispy bacon color… while the rest of my body is paler than the bottom of a pontoon boat or a Larry Bird rookie card.

Kurt Cobain once sang 🎶weather changes moods🎶 And that’s certainly true, for good or for bad. It’s very easy to get excited about the transitional seasons, your spring and your fall, because it’s when arguably the best weather is. It’s not extreme. You can almost wear anything. If it’s 70 degrees in the spring, you’ll probably wear shorts because your legs have been held hostage under pants for so long. If it’s 70 degrees in the fall, you’ll probably wear jeans because they look better with the new shoes you just bought after convincing yourself “well I mean, I NEED these, it’s about to get chilly!” When you know damn well you’ve got a perfectly good pair in the garage you only wore twice last year. And that’s ok. Life is hard enough, you need to treat yourself sometimes, damn it! (Ok, this was about me)

The winter is a different story, though. It’s unforgiving. Every other season is to be enjoyed. Winter is to be endured. And that’s coming from a man below the Mason Dixon… God bless you poor souls up North. My In-laws are from Iowa, and one year after Christmas, the snot in my nose completely froze as I was packing our truck to head out of Webster City and back home to Georgia where 35 degrees would now feel positively balmy! Of course I don’t feel too bad for ‘em cause hell, they are used to it. And on top of that, they at least get snow! Where I’m from, it still gets cold enough to piss you off, but all we get as far as precipitation goes is a good ole wet sludge. Sure, you can make a snowman out of sludge, but it’ll look less like Frosty and more like a cast-out leper or Sir Jorah Mormont when he got infected with grayscale.

I choose not to think about it this year though. I’m going to just enjoy Fall for what it is and try not to dwell on what it will become. I’ve gotten better at things like that this year. Maybe it’s the therapy. Maybe it’s the medication. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m getting older, and with that comes the knowledge/fear of how little time we actually get on this twisted Circus we call Earth. Much like dying, Winter is coming whether we like it or not. You can spend what time we have left thinking about how bad it’s gonna be, or you can make Pumpkin Pie and enjoy it on your porch before we are forced inside to rewatch Game Of Thrones for the 10th time and have a ‘lectric bill higher than Willie Nelson at a laser show.

This year, I shall enjoy my pumpkin pie!

Goodbye, summer. Till we meet again!

‘Corey