Jumbled Up

It’s still early October, and I’m already sick of pumpkin spice. There, I said it.

Before you assemble a lynch mob and head on over to my place, let me clarify: I am NOT forbidding you, or even discouraging you, from enjoying the plethora of pumpkin spice flavored or scented items all around us. Go ahead and gobble that muffin, slurp down that latte, light that candle! (One has to wonder: is “Pumpkin” one of the Spice Girls? But I digress.)

I don’t care if you paint your house orange and dress up as a cinnamon stick for Halloween. Just please don’t assume I’m on the same autumnal bandwagon. I’m still baking with blueberries and steaming asparagus, and scenting my home office with a “Seaside Solstice” votive. 

Yes, I know I should adhere to the sacred cycle of the seasons, eschew produce that has been imported here from different climes and so on. I do realize that farm-fresh tomatoes and juicy peaches are at their peak of flavor during July and August. However, I am easily bored, and my palate demands constant variety. I know of people who eat corn on the cob every single day in mid-summer, but as of the fifth or six cob-full, all I’m craving is a nice candy cane. I like to squirrel away Trader Joe’s maple leaf cookies to consume on the beach, and the ONLY time Thanksgiving dinner has any appeal to me is in the late spring. 

Contrary? Definitely. But life is short, so I figure I’d better eat some strawberry shortcake in February, just in case. As I write this, I am thawing a tub of lump crabmeat I bought months ago in Lewes, and look forward to a summery supper on a cool fall night. For years, I have been hunting vainly for lemon custard ice cream, which I hadn’t tasted since childhood at Normandy Beach, NJ. Finally, three weeks ago, I unearthed a half-gallon of the stuff in Shop N Bag! Hooray! But when I returned for another carton, lemon custard was gone. In its place? You guessed it: pumpkin spice. 

 I used to look longingly at magazine photo spreads for cruise wear and island vacations, that would appear on the newsstands in January. How heavenly, I thought, to be able to escape the frosty chill of the Northeast US, and steal away to a sun-kissed tropical paradise! Yet if I were to live full time in a REAL tropical paradise (like my sister C, who resides in Honolulu), I know I’d be pining away for snowflakes and crackling fires within hours. My short attention span makes it impossible for me to hunker down and truly experience one season at a time. Bring ‘em all on at once, I say!

 My veteran retired friends cautioned that I’d lose track of the time once I was no longer working at church, and that has certainly been true. But guess what? It doesn’t matter! Tuesday? Sunday? Winter? Spring? 

 Yes, please.