It’s October now, and we’re coming up on my favorite part of the year: autumn. Summer has so few holidays that I adore, with the possible exception of my birthday, which I’m still petitioning for national holiday status. Not too sure why the holiday makers are ignoring me so thoroughly, but anyway.

Now, on the not too distant horizon all of my favorite holidays are looming. We’re going to an actual pick-your-own-pumpkin patch this weekend which is about a million times better than the overcrowded, carnival-like one that we used to go to. Like anything else in the world, our old pumpkin patch was super-awesome until the rest of the world discovered it, and then the owners brought in a petting zoo, rides, a clown, a circus, a corn maze, a donkey show, llamas, an apple orchard and rocket rides. I’m only exaggerating slightly.

Afterward, if we’re all still alive, we’re going to carve pumpkins and decorate cupcakes. I’m completely excited by this because not only does this mean I might get to eat a cupcake, which, after weeks on a diet sounds totally delicious, but also, seeing the holidays through the eyes of your children is half of the reason for HAVING kids in the first place. Right?

(the other half is, of course, tax deductions. OBVIOUSLY)

In a orange and black induced haze, I had forgotten what ELSE October brings to our house: fundraiser time. We live in a kid-infested neighborhood, the kind that you literally cannot walk through without tripping over someone’s bike, or someone’s toddler which is great. Mostly I like kids, especially if I don’t have to watch them and they’re not destroying my stuff.

I was a Brownie for a year until I dropped out when I realized what a waste of time and energy it was. Time I could have better spent sitting on my ass and watching grass grow. I dutifully sold cookies door to door as mandated by sadistic leaders everywhere and possibly one of the most traumatic experiences of my eight year old life.

I had doors slammed in my face. People scream at me. I got stiffed and ripped off. I got blisters and ruined a perfectly good pair of Keds. And for all of my trouble? I got some stupid sad-eyed puppy charm for the zipper on my hoodie.

I didn’t even sell enough to get a stupid patch.

In a month or two I will be literally be swimming in the very same stuff that I cannot eat (hel-lo diet!) my personal tithing to the Fundraising Gods. I am entirely sympathetic to these poor little tykes coming around, so much so that I try to buy something from the younger ones. PLUS, I am also trying to work up our Fundraising Karma for our children, so that by the time that I have to take them (shudder, shudder) door-to-door, mayhap people will not spit at them.

Every time the doorbell rings, I grab my check book and say a silent prayer of thanks that my own door-to-door days are now over, and later as I’m swimming in a sea of butt-ugly wrapping paper or popcorn, I’ll try and remember that maybe, just maybe, I was the house that got that kid the patch that I never got.

Or maybe I just have SUCKER written on my forehead.