No One Woke Me Up When September Ended

Bad joke from a girl forever basking in her middle school glory days, I'm so sorry.

But in all seriousness, here I was fresh off of a vacation, tottering around with a tan and loads of beach pictures in my Camera Roll to obsessively swipe through, and then all of a sudden: the mornings stayed dark later and the evenings dimmed earlier, and the temptation to order a pumpkin spice latte became too strong to resist, and the weather called for snuggly sweaters most days (well, for half a day usually–which meant sweating through the other half), and football and fall television took over the TV, and Google Calendar flipped over to October and then it was basically,

*eyes bulging crazily*

I've always adored fall, but don't we all?

Early fall, that's the very best–when a proud sun is tempered by a refreshing bite in the air. It's a season that comes alive with its promise of all that's ahead: flickering candles and the holidays, thicker blankets and traditions and ABC Family Christmas movies–hehe, the anticipation!

I'm also a sucker for the inevitable introspection that comes along like clockwork this time of year, likely conditioned by the start of the school year (or the more dramatic, sob-inducing TV shows). There's lots of self-reflection, like having a lunch date with a friend you hadn't had a juicy catch-up session with in awhile.

Speaking of!

Reunions! They appear far more frequently in the autumn that any other time in the year I feel, thanks to literal reunions and football games and the holidays and raucous birthday parties (okay, I guess these happen in other seasons too) and that previously mentioned inclination to be particularly self-reflective. In this past month alone, I've spent some good old-fashioned QT with a close friend from high school, respected former co-workers, and my very favorite–my best bud from college who took a mini-breather from law school and flew across the country to see me for the weekend and indulge in ALL the edible San Francisco things.

I played hooky on Friday and totally ignoring the fact that she arrived so late the night prior, dragged her out of bed at 7am to Plow, the best breakfast in town. And over steaming mugs of coffee and pillowy pumpkin pancakes (to which I squealed, it tastes like FALL!), we re-hashed every major life event that's occurred since we last saw each other last October.

We ordered the same exact thing, like we always did.

She life-coached me, like she's always done.

I sat in awe of her and her accomplishments, as I've always been so proud to do.

Okay, /endsappy. (I told you this time of year gets me in a weird mood.)

When she ever so curiously inquired what activities I had up my sleeve for our short weekend together, I told her very honestly:

we're going to eat until we can't.

and then we're going to walk until we can eat again.

repeat.

And so, we walked home, took a short nap after I read us our dinner menu as a bedtime story and snuggled up close to her, and then we proceeded to the Marina for almond milk lattes and to see the air show practice (where we ran into another close friend from college–I'm telling you! Reunions!) and pumpkin maple cupcakes because

FALL FALL FALL. 

You'd think I'm getting a dollar every time I type the word 'fall' or 'autumn' or 'pumpkin,' huh.
What I'm trying to get at is... I LOVE FALL for every cliched reason out there and also because it brought me back my best friend, however so briefly.
Next time I'm going to tell you about the rest of the things we ate because I don't think I'll rest easy until I do.