Hey! It's FREAKIN FALL!

I go over to a friends place and man, oh man, she is ready for the season.

Her house screams, "In case you didn't know it, it's Freakin FALL!"

I'm looking around like, "I know!  Really?"

So I trip over the fake hay bale and fall into four pumpkins she's purchased for the season and along with the 6 hardy mums creating her monument to autumn on the front steps.  Should I explain that it's still close to 80 degrees during the day and that those pumpkins will either be rotten or squirrel food way before Halloween hits?  And everyone knows she doesn't live on a farm, so why the hay bale?  Especially with the fake scarecrow, the only thing that's scaring is the chipmunks and squirrels tempted by the rotting pumpkin.

Of course, she should have made it more authentic with a bunch of cobwebs from my house complete with the spider jumping out at you and scaring the shit out of you.


Is that pumpkin spice candles that I smell as I walk through the door?

There is a huge basket sitting on her dining room table, I'm not sure if she went and stole it out of her grandma's attic or hit the thrift store on that one.  The addition of gourds scream, "Guess what?  It's Freakin Fall!"  This makes me wonder, who in the world actually knows what a cornucopia is and to a larger point, who really cares.

Not only is it the basket of gourds, but there's a few stray gourds that are strategically placed in 90 degree angles of the basket with faces already carved on them!  This says, "yeah, it's fall and I have the jump on Halloween.  How Fall am I?"

She brought in some leaves from the backyard and had a party on the table, probably throwing them up in the air screaming, "Open and ready for fall!"

The sign on her wall lists all the reasons she loves fall.  Including "sitting under a blanket with a warm cup of cocoa and a good book."  Obviously she forgot she had kids, because with kids this never happens.

We're served pumpkin muffins, with Pumpkin Spiced Coffee and just to make me happy a little "apple brandy" added to the coffee, helping make all the decorations look that spectacular!

All I can think is, "Well we are another step closer to the first snowfall, when she'll have to haul all this crap away and get out the, 'Oh crap, it's actually winter' decorations."

My monument to fall?  The leftover cobwebs from summer along with a flag stuck in the front yard stating "It's Fall Ya'll."

Winning.