Sincerity as far as the eye can see

Is anyone else completely freaked out that it's fall already?

I guess for those of you with children, it's not really that big of a deal since back-to-school was like so yesterday. But, for those of us without, the coming of fall is like ... I don't know ... it's like something new is happening.

I know New Year's brings the sense of a fresh start to a lot of people . New Year's Eve is actually my BFF's favorite holiday for that reason. It's not like her life slowly degrades over the course of every 12 months, but it's the energy and feeling of hope a new year brings her that makes this holiday so exciting.

For me, that feeling comes in the fall. I call myself a summer person, but I get a little giddy when the days get colder and shorter. I love sweaters and boots and comfort food. Maybe I have a little black bear in me, but I love staying warm inside with a glass of wine and a pile of magazines, a lamp softly lighting every room and the tube glowing and going unnoticed in the corner. Everything seems that much better. Like eating chocolate with three layers on, because you're already all covered up.

This love of fall was probably instilled in me from a very young age. My parents packed up the car every October and headed to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. Because my family didn't eat at restaurants, we tailgated at the beach and ate my mom's cold fried chicken and macaroni salad for lunch. Then we wandered the arts and crafts booths, peered in the window at the caramel-making shop and watched the parade. I was always, and still am, frankly, afraid of the people in stilts.

My mom made me and my sister's baby and toddler clothes and she made our Halloween costumes up until about the sixth-grade. We started the planning about a month early. I do not remember going to the fabric store, but I remember her brown sewing box with the cracked lid and her sitting at the kitchen table sewing away. Snow white, a gray mouse, a witch, a butterfly. The last requiring more wire and glue than thread. She taught me how to sew, and I made a Minnie Mouse costume my sophomore year in college. She probably wouldn't have approved. (It was more diva than Disney.)

Nowadays, Tim and I make a date to go to the pumpkin patch every year. I watch It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown as if it was a State of the Union address. I threw a cookie decorating party last year for my copywriter friends and made five dozen ghost, tombstone, pumpkin and black cat sugar cookies that we frosted and sprinkled. This year there will be pumpkin lights.

So I guess all there is left to say is, go ahead, buy that bag of mini Reese's peanut butter cups, drink some Oktoberfest beer and start dreaming of the pumpkin pie to come.

It will make you so happy.