October! It’s in the air.
All of it. Every bit of it. In the air.
It that time of year when every park, empty lot, strip mall, and open space of land within eye sight is converted into a yard sale, bake sale, craft fair, school carnival, or county fair.
Everybody has something to sell and they want your money. They entice you with signs, and voices and smells.
Oh the smells.
The smell of sugar. The smell of desperate hawkers. The smell of beer. The smell of greasy food. The smell of animal excrement next to the beer garten/food tent.
The temperature is dropping and the air is crisp. Viners are creeping on to your property in search of the perfect vine from which they will make something totally useless and sell if for hundreds of dollars. Coners and nutters will crawl with the snakes and other bell-crawlers to rob of you of your perfect fire-starting pine cones and squirrel feeding acorns and nuts. All in the name of crafts.
Craft fairs pop up at every church
, synagogue, empty building, park, and vacant sports field. Everyone has some painted jar/fall decoration you can’t live without. Home soaps containing every herb/flower/oil that you’ve avoided for fear of going into anaphylaxis. But they are pure and homemade.
The beer festivals are in full swing. Each festival showcases several hundred vendors wanting to teach you how to make your own swill, er beer. Beer making kits are offered with or without ingredients and/or instructions. If you partake of enough of the beverage being celebrated, instructions would be disregarded anyway. Why bother.
If the fairs, festivals,
amusements rides, greasy food and hawkers aren’t enough, wait. There is always the Great Pumpkin and all of his patches. If there happens to be any empty land larger than a baseball, a pumpkin patch sale will appear, complete with tiny miscreants running about. Some miscreants are selling, but most are yelling “Over here. Over here. I found the perfect one.” Pointing to some misshapen, lopsided, handleless orange orb. They are in love with their new jack-o-lantern.
But do not distress, October is one of the longest months of the year. By the time November rolls around you will be broke, depressed, possibly hung over and facing the biggest, most expensive holidays of the year.
Happy October!
BTW: October is also National Sarcasm Month
