When someone asks "What is your least favorite month of the year?" For me November, unequivocally, is it.
It's when you set the clocks back to daylight savings time. No more long evenings with walks or bike rides after work; it's dark when you get home from work, and by the end of the month, it will be dark when you leave for work, too.
No more weekend getaways for outdoor adventures, because it's rainy, cold and snowy in the hills and mountains.
But yet, it's too early for snowboarding (or skiing, if that is your sport.) And too early for Christmas.
The barbecues, outdoor gatherings, and parties- that pretty much all winds down. The cold has a certain bite to it that it didn't have just a few weeks ago, and we were lucky here to actually have a nice sort of "Indian Summer" in mid-October of this year. Everyone just hunkers down.
Halloween is over, and the leaves have turned. Sometimes, there is a certain serene beauty around sunset, when the fallen leaves cover the ground and the orange and pink sky shines through the trees that still bear leaves, or even afterwards, when they are mostly bare branches. This is actually kind of nice.
With no more outdoor fun, you turn inward, focusing on artistic projects (like writing blogs) or other hobbies. This is nice, too.
Halloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid (if you could call it a "holiday" as you typically still had to go to school, or work.) Going out with your childhood buddies and scoring candy was fun, as was role-playing your dress-up character for the day. I remember dressing up as Ozzy, my favorite rock star, as a kid one year. Before that, I was King Tut, and I was even Darth Vader once. Everyone in our neighborhood got into it- there'd be tons of kids out and about, and it was rare that you'd find a house that didn't hand out candy.
As an adult, I still dress up for Halloween and go into work once in a while, though sadly I didn't this year. Our bosses don't mind. I've been Paul Stanley, (another childhood rock n' roll hero) a cleaning guy, a gnome, and a face-painted Black Metal musician (rock n' roll has come a long way since KISS!)
Sadly, this year, I didn't get one single trick or treater. I had the carved pumpkins out and lit, lights on, bags of candy at the ready...but it seems that the kids in our neighborhood either attended a nearby "Trunk or treat" at a neighborhood religious establishment, or went to one of the rich-people neighborhoods which have a city-wide reputation for doing it up at Halloween. Disappointing, but one silver lining...SOMEONE has to eat all those reeses peanut butter cups that I bought. My co-workers loved them.
So, Halloween's over, November's here, and it's time to put the mountain bike in storage, mount the studded tires, and get the snowboard waxed and ready to go for when the snow inevitably starts to fall. And rake leaves- my least favorite yard work chore, ugh! TIP FOR DOM/MES: You want to punish your submissives/slaves? Make them rake leaves. Even diehard masochists will hate it. Has to be done though. Last year I got over 30 bag fulls.
And on that note, that brings me to one final "make the best of my least favorite month" point:
Locktober is over.
I hope that all of you who, perhaps involuntarily, participated over the last month got to enjoy the most mind-blowing, intense, and satisfying release ever. Hope you earned it!
That's all for now.