It's Fall, Y'all 🍂

Happy Halloween, everybody. :)  I hope your holiday is filled with all the candy you can eat and then some, a "Treehouse of Horror" marathon (the couch gag above used to freak me the fuck out, but I still insisted on watching our VHS box set of Treehouses constantly), and plenty of spooky goodness.

Now - onto the blog post.

I am well aware that it has been fall for a while.  But, with today being Halloween and fall weather finally getting into full swing in the past couple weeks (which is an uh-oh, but that's a thought for another time), I thought I'd do another silly little list.  This time, we're talking things that just feel like fall for me.  As always, some will be obvious, but also as always, I'm hoping some of them make you go "what the fuck."

Let's get into it.

1. Harry Potter

Let's start with an easy one.  This one also feels like winter to me, like it does for many, but I started rereading the series (which I had been threatening to do for over a year) for the first time since elementary school on September 1st, the day the kids go back to Hogwarts, so it just felt like the thing to do.  That image of the floating pumpkins in the Great Hall is ingrained into my brain.  It's just the perfect series for spooky season.

2. The songs on my autumn vibes and spooky season playlists

3. Old School Runescape

This one surprised me, too, but I got the sudden urge to play it the other day.  So, I downloaded it and played through the tutorial island and got a wave of nostalgia from the first time I played it on our massive computer in the second grade.  I remembered having to cook shrimp and kill a giant rat.  Also getting lost and not knowing where anything is, which makes completing quests hard.  Something about it just makes it feel like a game to play while it's dark and you're hanging out in your room listening to the rain.

4. Hot ham and cheese sandwiches

My mom always made this in a particular way.  It wasn't just a grilled cheese with ham on it.  It was all rolled up in this big pastry that would get cut up so you could see the layers, and we usually had it with French fries.  It just reminds me of elementary school and weeknight dinners.  Plus it just sorta slaps.  Keep it simple, stupid, ya know?

5. Scholastic book fairs

Speaking of elementary school.  There was nothing like my parents handing me a blank check and telling me to pick out a few new books because how could they say no to a daughter who reads?  These and ordering books from their catalogue and finding the package on your desk after coming back from lunch or specials was a simply indescribable feeling.  Walking home from the bus stop, crunching on leaves with your backpack full of new books.  Unrivaled.

6. The Great British Bake-Off

Since I'm American, this show usually becomes available to us in the fall.  I just love watching British people bake!!  With the silly little music and the silly little hosts and their complete lack of knowledge on American pie and guacamole.  It's fantastic.  It's cozy.  It's perfect autumnal binge-watching material.

7. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

We read this in the fall of seventh grade, and I slowly fell absolutely in love with it.  I have read it more times than I can count.  I love absolutely everything about it, and I read it just about every November.  The book also takes place in the fall, and it's not just the chilly descriptions and leather and flannel that give it that feeling, but also the theme of unstoppable change.

8. Nashville Skyline and Rubber Soul

Putting these three together.  Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline of course - as the title suggests - has a country edge to it, and country music just feels very fall-ish to me.  Rubber Soul also has that cover that just looks saturated and damp and earthy.  Those albums both have very full, lush sounds that I think sort of contributes to their autumnal feeling.  (I often associate music with the seasons, and there's a Beatles album for every season.)

9. Apple picking

This is an obvious one, but I haven't done it in years, so it's also something I'm just wanting to do again sometime.  I know people are like "actually, apple picking is pretty boring when you think about it, and it's just more work for you, so why the hell would you want to do it?"  Well, the answer is that I like climbing trees and love apple butter and farms.  Do I really need to explain myself to you?

10. The macabre

This is...very general.  And also not surprising; I mean, today is Halloween, and fall is the spooky season, after all.  But I meant for this to encompass several things: listening to ghost stories, playing with the Ouija board, watching scary movies, the strange and intense urge to look at Victorian death photos...all that.  Human beings seem to have this desire to get a good scare - even me, and that's...probably not the best idea for me, but here I am.  I like the fun, goofy parts of Halloween - the candy, the Peanuts Halloween special, bobbing for apples - as I do the scary parts: the haunted houses, the boneyards, the demons and the dead.  They go hand in hand with each other; there's not one without the other.  One of my favorite spooky stories to tell is The Green Ribbon, which I first heard as a Girl Scout and then in Alvin Schwartz's book, In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories.  It's a crowd pleaser, and one of my friends used to ask me to tell it constantly, Halloween or not.

So, tonight, you'll find me passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, probably with The Simpsons and game three on in the background.  Then I'll go read something on r/nosleep or something similiar that will ensure I get, well, no sleep.

I hope you all have a wonderful Halloween full of good candy and good scares, and a lovely and cozy rest of your fall season. :)