autumn

[seasidefics]

its getting slightly cool here... though i feel like i'm gonna jinx it and it'll turn back to the 90s in the next couple of days, but i'm enjoying it. it always reminds me of childhood. this cool, dim, slightly even overcast sky... like when the leaves would still turn orange and red on our front yard tree and they’d be scattered all over the ground. i don’t think i ever had the stereotypical movie experience of making a big pile and jumping in them, there was never enough, but still... it reminds me of that. fond memories.

i also always think abt tea. my dad loved tea when it got even slightly cold. he’d fill up his thermos and take the entire day to finish a cup. meanwhile, i’m the opposite, I drink hot drinks in a minute but savour iced ones all day haha. i also think of an older girl on my street. her name was michelle. she was one of the only older kids on the block, in high school already when i was just in elementary. but she was so kind and still hung out with us. we would always gather up at her house and jump on her trampoline, and she was super creative, so she’d use us as her lil guinea pigs for her art projects. i remember one where she was practicing stop motion and made me and a friend into aliens with the green face paint and all, and filmed a video... i wonder how it turned out? wish i could see it again.

anyways, i think abt her with tea, bc i remember a day when it was just me in the house and she made me a cup of tea with popcorn. i think it was my first time trying it... and yk how when other people cook for you it just tastes so much better? so yeah, she just pops in my head whenever i think of tea. along with my dad.

 

i think i just have a lot of fond memories associated with fall. and i know summer is all i talk about, but i actually used to hate summer as a kid… maybe because part of me was always bitter that i never got to celebrate my birthday in school like the other kids, and then there was the looming doom of starting a new school grade hanging over me the entire break. but when i look back on it now, i obviously had a good time and feel really nostalgic. still, fall used to be my favorite season.

realizing a lot of my immediate family was really into spooky stuff probably explains why. my dad was (i wrote is at first and thought long and hard about changing it… i really didn’t wanna correct it) a huge horror fiend. he had so many dvds and books. i was probably exposed way too early lol—I have a very vivid memory of my first nightmare as a kid, and it was all about chucky. he was really into bad, campy scary movies. even my older sisters, or at least two of them, were kinda… emo? at least all they wore was black (just like me), and they were horror movie buffs too. they used to beg me to go to knott’s scary farm with them, but i was always too chicken shit. i regret that now.

even my brother’s mom (he’s my half-brother from my dad, so i have no blood connection to her) was super into vampires. she had this true blood wine? she still does, actually. she sadly passed in 2020, but my brother kept it, and it’s still on the high shelves in the game room. she even had a perfume and lipstick that went along with it.

 

and it’s getting closer to october, so my brother is already starting to decorate and buy stuff for his haunted house. he goes all out every year, as you can guess. it’s his favorite holiday too. i have mixed feelings about it… we don’t have a good relationship, and it would—and still does—make me envious and bitter how much he spends on halloween decorations every year, but gets angry with me over a vet bill that was way lower, even though i paid more than half. anyways, i don’t need to rehash that… i think the anger also stems from a place of longing. i wish i could decorate freely, y’know, be a part of the process like i did in our childhood home.

 

we actually didn’t decorate that much outside besides lights, but we went all in on the inside as kids. i can still remember the specific decorations too… we had these big rubbery rats. the texture is still very vivid in my head. i tried to look for them, but none of the results look like what i remember. we had a couple of those, and me and my sis would play with them like stuffed animals lol, instead of putting them up. all the fake cobwebs… the ones that suck to the glass windows… the led pumpkins…


anyways, it seems autumn is very close to being here… well, as close as it can get in socal. i want to drink hot cocoa and wear fuzzy socks and just be in my childhood home again </3