Can somebody tell me where October has gotten off to? I flipped the calendar over from September and the minute I turn my back I’m flipping it over to November; the eleventh month named after the number nine, and other than Thanksgiving, a most depressing 30 days. Of course, to what I’m specifically referring is having to start driving home from work in the dark; that insidious business of changing the clock back to Standard Time.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind having one or the other, daylight saving or daylight spending; it’s all the same when you’re talking about how long the sun is shining…it’s either going to work in the dark or leaving work in the dark.

I saw a post on Facebook that said, “We’ll be turning our clocks back soon. Getting an extra hour in 2021 is like getting a bonus track on a Yoko Ono album.” In other words: oh, no.

That’s a bit harsh, I know, but the year thus far has been like one of her primal screams.

Anyway, welcome to the holiday season. With the nights starting to get chilly, my body is telling me it would like maybe an extra layer of adipose tissue to get through the winter. From Halloween through New Year’s Day we – the editorial “we” – are eating way too many empanadas, rellenos and biscochitos, not to mention posole, and getting our fat pants out of the closet. About this time is when I realize that I, in my optimism, had donated all my fat pants to the Samaritan Center in Magdalena. Not finding the correct size for my expected BMI in Socorro, I resort to going to that catch-all, do-all, end-all five-and-dime on the internet…must I say its name? Ahh, yes… the consumer’s Amazonia.

This is when it gets frustrating. All I want is a pair of pants, and instead, get directed to “men’s fashions” and “wardrobe essentials.” Wait, I’m thinking this is not fashion. It’s pants. I’m sorry, I don’t want to make a statement with my pants, so no tripled pleated khakis, thank you. We’re talking something in the line of Wranglers or the sort.

I think I’ve worn jeans forever, except when I was little and I got a pair of corduroy pants for Christmas. The one thing I can remember about them was that my friends could hear me coming around a corner.

Regardless of waist size, Thanksgiving is only three weeks away. In the meantime, we can celebrate King Tut Day, Veteran’s Day, National Saxophone Day, the Great American Smokeout, and lest we forget, Black Friday, the Hunger Games of shopping.

Today, incidentally, is Will Rogers Day in Claremore, Oklahoma. His father was Cherokee and he once joked that his family didn’t arrive on the Mayflower, “they met it.”

It was Will who also said:

  • What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
  • Everything is funny, as long as it is happening to someone else.
  • Congress is so strange; a man gets up to speak and says nothing, nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees.
  • We can’t all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

But anyway, back to the month of Thanksgiving and the pressing question of the day: Do you have enough pumpkin spice to make it through the holidays?

I’ve been looking around and have tried to make a list of all the products that have jumped on the pumpkin spice bandwagon. This search was inspired by my recent purchase of pumpkin-flavored Reese’s, and it seems nothing escapes the pumpkin spice blitz.

There’s pumpkin spice rum, pumpkin spice vodka, and even Bud Light, as well as pumpkin spice lip balm, pumpkin spice dog treats, pumpkin spice cheese, and a waffle maker that makes pumpkin-shaped waffles.

But wait, there’s more. Pumpkin pie coffee, pumpkin spice Kit Kats, pumpkin spice kitchen cleaner, pumpkin spice underarm deodorant, pumpkin spice Cheerios, pumpkin spice glazed donuts, pumpkin spice Bud Light, pumpkin spice toothpaste, and of course, pumpkin spice scented face mask.

But how about maybe, God-willing, an actual pumpkin pie?

That reminds me: What do you get when you divide the circumference of a pumpkin by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.

Looks like I got sidetracked again. Just remember this Sunday don’t forget to set your clocks back an hour. Personally, I’d like to turn mine back…back to before i-Things and Facebook.  Before rap music, trickle-down economics, pat-downs at airports, and Real Ids. Before cell phones and before Fritter, oops, I mean Twitter.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my grumpy system, truth be told, I have no real complaints – outside of that whole clock thing. Now all I have to do is figure out what I’ll do with that extra 60 minutes this Sunday.

Oh. Right. I’ll be snoozing.

 

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain