Summer's end always gives me the blues

Even though I don't go to school and haven't, for nearly a decade, I still have trouble dealing emotionally with the end of August.

Even though autumn has become my favourite season of the year (early-November snowstorms nothwithstanding, naturally) because of football season and the cooler temperatures (nothing twists my britches than trying to sleep in 32C humidity), I still feel an overwhelming sadness when the last pages of the August calendar burn themselves out and school resumes.

I don't know if that's just me, or if other people get into this funk I seem to find myself in.

Maybe it's the idea that my own, protracted, two-week summer vacation has come and gone with crappy weather, only to have summer show up in the last week of August.

I mean, come on. That's insult to injury.

Not only do I have to go back and sit and sit and sit and sit in traffic caused by the summer roadwork projects, now I have to sweat while I do it because air conditioning costs me an arm and a leg to run.

So, with community pools, day camps and parks programs across the West Island closing the doors for the long off-season period, the happy voices, shouting, playing and laughter gives way to. . . silence.

Maybe it's because when I was a kid, my sisters and I spent summers at the Pointe Claire Parks Program, which were the happiest days of our lives, and so, I'm conditioned to shift into morose mode when the end of August rolls around.

I think, though, at then end of it, my somber end-of-summer mood is partly the realization that the annual life cycle has reached its peak, and now there's nowhere to go but down. Soon, the lovely bushes, flowers and leaves West Islanders cultivated so lovingly so they would see the light of day in April will soon be wilted and buried under a blanket of snow.

See? I'm already depressed.

So, there you have it. I'm in a funk for which there is no cure. My daughter's laughs and smiles aren't enough to make feel better in the face of the inevitable. Winter is coming, and it's coming soon. No matter how much I try to snap out of these end-of-summer blahs, they keep on bringing me down. It's disquieting, and frankly, I am not enjoying it in the least.

Sorry, honey. . .what's that?

Football's on TV?

OK, now where was I?