Autumn in California

I hate summer. It's hot, I don't get a vacation like I used to in school, everyone wants to do things outside which means my deathly pale skin will inevitably suffer from one or multiple sunburns and so I have to keep a stock of calamine lotion and aloe vera goo in my fridge which limits the shelf space of things that are more important to me, such as mayonnaise and ranch dressing. Also, you all may be thinking something like, "Shut up, you spoiled brat, you live in California - the land of perpetual sunshine and fish tacos and you've never had to shovel snow in your life or buy any kind of 'winter coat' beyond that huge puffy down thing that your dad keeps in storage for when you go camping Yosemite and Sequoia."

This is true, but let me just say that for a California girl, it is not at all like the Katy Perry song.

I don't wear bikini tops with cut off shorts, and why would you want to hang around someone who would melt your popsicle? That would just bother me. Get away from me, leave me and my popsicle in peace. Rather, when it gets up to 113 degrees here (I live in the hot part of L.A., just above the Gateway to Hell) you will find me lying supine on my floor in front of my mediocre wall-unit air conditioner in my Batman underwear, trying to imbibe my Slurpee as fast as humanly possible before it melts into that weird, flat soda-like liquid.

So, I complain a lot. But then something happens - it becomes less hot. It's technically called "fall" or "autumn" here, but it pretty much just means that mixed in with the 80 and 90 degree days, there will be some lovely 70 (60 if you're lucky) degree days with maybe some clouds and the occasional heavy mist (we'll call it "rain" here, but the rest of you will probably call it "fog") and I can go to Starbucks and get abnormal amounts of pumpkin spice lattes and I'll spend my afternoons texting my fellow Halloween-obsessed friends about costume ideas and trips to pumpkin patches. It's Fall-O-Ween on steroids out here, because with no beautiful leaves turning and no crisp, cool, autumn breezes that would allow us to wear those cute pea coats we bought specifically for that trip to New York and have started collecting dust in our closets, we Californians have to grasp at the wisps of fall and force it to descend upon us. Many of us will draw our curtains against the still-too-warm 85 and sunny weather, put "Nightmare Before Christmas" on loop and continuously stare at our desktop backgrounds of beautiful red and orange leaves - a photo that was taken somewhere else in the world that has more than "hot" and "less hot" seasons.

When I lived in Northern California, we had fall. We also had trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. I usually wanted to be some variation of a ballerinafairyprincess, because as long as there was a lot of pink tulle and sparkly fairy wings and a tiara, I could be really, truly happy. This year, EM and I have to keep our Halloween Candy Bowl in the fridge because it's still hot enough to melt our Kit Kats and Twix. It doesn't matter, though. I have declared it Fall-O-Ween in The Average Broad Household, and I will celebrate it in some way absolutely every day, until Christmastime.