I have to admit, fall is not my favorite season. Without my own farm here, I don’t feel like an industrious squirrel, busily gathering in her harvest. Instead, I know that I'm headed for perpetually cold hands, a constantly dripping nose, and waking up in the dark. When the leaves change, it’s beautiful, but I know that I’m going to spend the next several months without much green in my life, and it feels as if the sun heads south with the birds. I haven’t even gotten an undergraduate degree yet, but I’m already looking forward to my retirement. When I am old, I will leave for Florida or the South Pacific like clockwork as soon as the first frost hits.

I like to be where it’s hot out, and I don’t like thinking about all that snow and cold wind heading my way. It doesn’t help that until two years ago I’d never spent an entire winter in the US. As you can imagine, I am very good at slipping and falling once the snow starts –very good. You could start a professional falling sport around some of the tumbles I’ve taken.

So you could say fall has taken some getting used to. I’ve spent a lot of it dreading the cold and the winter blues, but there are things that can (and should) be said for it. Halloween, pumpkin spice lattes, the leaves –these have been extensively and exhaustively gone over (looking at you, Buzzfeed,) but there are a lot of underappreciated fall things that make me happy, even when the temperature starts dropping and I have to wear too many clothes. When I retire, I will make it a practice never to wear more than four articles of clothing at once (because my mother taught me that underwear makes a lady.)

For one, Daylight Savings Time. It was an odd concept to wrap my head around, but once I pictured the US government under Teddy Roosevelt as Father Time, changing the hands of the clock so as to get in a few more zzz’s, it was easy to accept. The first week of DST is great because you get to spend an extra hour in bed waiting for the first of four alarms to go off. I told myself once that DST would give me extra time –I would leave my slothful nature behind, run marathons maybe, write bloggable posts, eat Instagram-worthy breakfasts. But let’s face it, nothing beats the ability to hit the snooze button six times, not even running, and I intend to glory in that. Goodbye, dreams of greatness!

The second thing is Halloween. I am very bad at Halloween, not having celebrated it much as a child with the exception of the time when I was six and was dressed up as a very small and ferocious witch. If you think a tiny blond witch with purple stockings and a veil doesn’t sound ferocious, you are probably right, but I got a lot of loot from adults who were willing to pretend. My thought process was largely “Free candy??!!! I have found my holiday!!!!”

Sadly, I am now too old and lacking in sewing abilities to pull off trick-or-treating at this stage in my life, but a dad whose kids I babysit said I look like Mia Farrow and one of my friends (both of these are very kind, good people, wonderful liars) said Julie Andrews, so maybe I can pull together a Rosemary’s Baby impression while singing eerie versions of Sound Of Music songs, with extra yodeling for added spookiness. I’ll be happy with whatever I get as long as they don’t give me licorice.

Finally, persimmons and persimmon pudding are the main reason fall is bearable (my grandparents have made pudding for years and apparently liking the stuff is genetic.)

For those of you who don’t know what a persimmon is, imagine a little paper-thin bag of pulp, except the color of Trump. They fall around the house in ridiculous numbers and make bad noises when they go through the lawnmower but trust me, persimmons are worth all the replaced mower blades. They are the color Umber (a fancy word for orange that Google just told me about) and a lovely color for a fruit, especially when you can mash those suckers up and squeeze the devil out of their ugly little puckered-up mugs before baking them into puddings that would make the witch in the candy house proud.

Anyway, they taste delicious.

Enjoy your fall, you lucky warm-blooded suckers. Drink your spicy lattes and your breakfast hot chocolate and revel in Thanksgiving thoughts. We can all be thankful for so much, you know. Persimmons, family, warm scarves, friends to share it with… I guess you could say I’m grateful for fall.

But when I move to Florida I’ll think of you all, raking leaves, and be thankful it isn’t me.