I spent last weekend in Boston visiting my sister, niece and nephew. My niece is a living doll with sumo wrestler thighs and my nephew has a tiny voice that makes any of his chatter completely endearing.

Alas, the wee rug rats were riddled with germs, and I returned to a doozy of a virus that has left me flattened, barf bucket by the bedside.

“Remember that I always loved you,” I’d croak tragically from the bed when The Sweetie would check on me.

“Can I get you anything?” He’d ask, his mouth covered protectively, keeping a safe distance away from my toxic germs.

“Just a gun. I’m ready to go,” I’d whisper.

“In that case can I eat your Cadbury’s chocolate egg?” He asked.

I am slowly mending, although when I do a mental inventory of food groups, most still make my stomach churn. Not the long gone Cadbury’s egg, though. I feel pretty confident that I could stomach some therapeutic chocolate. It is disconcerting for someone like me to want to shun food. Sadly, I checked the scale and my suffering hasn’t yielded a smidgen of weight loss. Sometimes there is no justice.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is a weird beast.  I was pulling out my summer clothes to pack for my free beach vacation, mere days away, and suddenly I felt so overwhelmed and dejected that all I could do was crawl under the covers, under my heaps of summer clothes and cry. Logically I know I should be polishing off my maracas, jumping for joy and hugging my beloved summer frocks, but instead I am crushed by this weight of winter misery.

It is comforting to know that I suffer from SAD rather than when I didn’t know what it was and spent the winter convinced that I was losing my mind. Relief will come. The days will get longer again and the darkness, heaviness and fog will release me. In the meantime, I take it hour by hour, relishing the things that make me smirk before I sink back again.

I love the brilliant Travelocity commercial from last year involving the crazed gnome. His maniacal singing while sitting with his Cheetos feels eerily familiar. I’d love him to drop by and sit on the couch with me. We could eat snacks and hum together.

Nice going Mutha Uckers.

Along with bracing myself for cooler temperatures and shorter days, I have to endure the autumn apologists. There are always those who have to share their misguided love of fall with me.

The glory of blazing coloured leaves? Great. Enjoy them while they last because after one big gust of wind they are gone, leaving nothing but bare ghostly branches, shivering squirrels and rain in their wake. Not the warm summer rain that makes everything sultry and steamy but the cold, dreary kind that runs down the back of your neck like nasty, clammy fingers. Likewise, there is always talk about the joys of crisp air. You can call it what you like but crisp is really a sneaky way to say cold. Cold makes my shoulders rise to my ears and the tips of my fingers icy so that people recoil when I touch them.

I am tired of the apple cheerleaders. Just because apples are plentiful and portable doesn’t make them great. They are not plump little bursts of sweetness like berries. They are tart, boring and insufferable, an overrated fruit if ever there was one. And need I remind anyone which fruit caused Adam and Eve to be cast out of Eden? It wasn’t the juicy strawberry now was it?

As far as comfort goes, the sandal beats the boot any day. Do feet really want to be stuffed into confining boots when they can be wiggling in delight and enjoying fresh air in a sandal? Is crunching through dry, dusty leaves that could be harbouring all kinds of mites really preferable to frolicking through soft grass with bare feet?

A friend tried to be helpful and suggested I cheer myself up with patterned tights. I spit on the patterned tight. I am not blessed with gazelle-like, slender legs and do not need to be drawing attention to that area. Pulling on a pair of tights is an ordeal. Inevitably they get twisted halfway up my legs and as soon as they are up I start feeling the horrible waistband digging into my tummy. A flimsy summer dress with bare legs is much more comfortable.

How can I jump on the bandwagon for shorter days? Why rejoice over a day that sees so little sunlight that it feels like bedtime at 5pm?  I suppose the autumn apologists prefer to chop the day off at the knees.

What do fall lovers have against chirping birds? Because you know they are leaving soon. Birds know better than to stick around when the icy weather arrives. Who would prefer to wake up in darkness and silence rather than light and chirping? Most animals are burrowing into holes knowing that the only way to survive this dreadful time is to crawl into a den, sleep and hope when they wake up again it’ll be all over.

Halloween and Thanksgiving? That is all you offer me in the way of fall holidays? Ghouls and slaughtered turkeys? How about the fact that every day feels like a celebration in the summer?

Perhaps I sound a trifle negative. Do I have to remind everyone what season comes after fall? Is everyone so short sighted? A few crunchy leaves, apples pies and gourds are supposed to make that nightmare around the corner more palatable?  I am not that easily swayed. If autumn lovers want to merrily ride on a harvest wagon to doom, they can be my guest, but I am not going to drink the cider.

I have always wanted to be an intimidating bad-ass so that people would think twice before messing with me. So far I haven’t mastered a tough girl persona. Instead of puffing out my chest and raising my voice, I retreat, slinking away with drooping shoulders. My tendency is to swallow potential tirades, mealy-mouthed girl that I am. Instead of letting it go, however, I fight in my mind, preparing my script for a future throw down.

I have been having a fight to the death in the arena of my mind for over a week now. A meddling acquaintance feels compelled to inform me on a regular basis that I am not living my life properly and I don’t know what is best for me. She apparently has all the answers to my unasked questions. My happiness is delusion, my contentment is apathy, my protests that I am satisfied with my life are denial. It’s funny how those who’s opinions I don’t care about are often the quickest to dole it out. It also seems that those who are miserable themselves have solutions for everyone else. It has become a bit of a theme this year where I feel judgment, spoken or unspoken, about my life and choices. I don’t consider myself a rebel or someone living a particularly unconventional life, but somehow my path seems to disturb some people. I have my health, I have love and I have connections that are meaningful. I have been eating delicious sandwiches with tomatoes right from our garden. One day I will have a dog. What more could I ask for? If I had a house or a more secure job or money would my life be better? Not to me. Yet there are those who are eager to act as pricks to my sunny balloon.

I was complaining about this latest installment of unsolicited advice over martinis with a couple of girlfriends.

“So maybe I am neurotic and a little flaky, but if I am happy and not complaining about my life, why should I have to defend it?”

There was silence from my girlfriend who has already admitted that she fears that I will end up sleeping on her couch in retirement. I have tried to assure her that her home will not be one of my destinations on my bag lady walkabouts, but I suspect she remains unconvinced.

My other girlfriend interjected, “But that is what makes you, you! If you weren’t all of those things you wouldn’t be you anymore.”

Bless her. Bless friends who love me for, and in spite of, my foibles. Bless those who don’t expect everyone to have the same values and goals and don’t feel the compulsion to enlighten me on a regular basis. Bless tomato sandwiches and refreshing lemon drop martinis. Bless the bad-ass mouthy chick within who always has a pithy retort to asinine comments, is a master of the stink-eye and can stop judgers in their tracks. One day she will be unleashed and the meddlers of the world will crumble.

I went to my friend’s daughter’s kindergarten graduation yesterday. They marched into the school gymnasium wearing paper graduation caps and waved at their families in the audience. It was utterly adorable. It was especially meaningful as I met my friend in kindergarten. It is hard to believe that 35 years ago we sat in a similar gymnasium together and were ever that short.

After the ceremony there was an announcement that juice and brownies were available for the children while the adults took photos. The kindergarten teacher began mingling and congratulating the parents. Suddenly she approached my friend and told her what a delight her daughter was. I was smiling in the background in full agreement when she turned to me and asked,

“Is this grandma?”

She was asking my childhood friend, who I went to kindergarten with, if I was her daughter’s grandmother. Which would make my friend, who I went to kindergarten with, my daughter. I did the math. It is possible to be a grandma to a six year old at forty-one. If I gave birth to my childhood friend at 16, and she in turn had her daughter at 16, I could in fact have a granddaughter. I don’t know which is worse, to be mistaken for being pregnant, which has happened to me, or to be mistaken for a grandma at forty-one. I guess the worst would have been if I was mistaken for a pregnant grandma.

I silently stepped aside to reveal the charming wizened lady behind me. My friend said, “This is grandma“. The real grandma is well into her seventies. She looks good, but she does not look like my contemporary.

I was speechless. Often in uncomfortable situations, people pleaser that I am, I try to help the idiot with her foot in her mouth feel less asinine. Instead, I turned silently to the table of brownies, mentally assessing that there were a few left and not that many children remaining. I was still assessing the brownies when the idiot teacher approached me again, flustered and babbling this time, tripping over herself, “Oh, I was hearing so much about grandma and how grandma was coming and that what was on my mind because I was expecting to see grandma.” I turned to the brownies again.

I am sure that children are expecting the Easter bunny at Easter but I have yet to be mistaken for the Easter bunny. The Queen is coming to Canada this week, and although some monarchists are anticipating seeing her, I doubt that I will be mistaken for the Queen.

Between the questions about my phantom pregnancy and now my rapid approach to playing canasta in a retirement home, I am developing a huge complex. The brownies that I shoved in my purse comforted me a little but I remain wounded. What is truly appalling is that this deranged lunatic who calls herself a teacher is allowed to teach. She is influencing the minds of the next generation. Luckily for me I won’t live to see it as my days are obviously numbered.