{"id":8680,"date":"2018-10-01T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/?p=8680"},"modified":"2018-10-01T12:00:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T16:00:09","slug":"what-september-means-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/2018\/10\/01\/what-september-means-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What September Means to Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<?xml encoding=\"UTF-8\"><html><body><p>From the pre-school age of two to the high school age of 18, I dreaded the month of September. If you don&rsquo;t believe me, check out the video of me wearing sunglasses during nap time at &ldquo;Miss Rita&rsquo;s,&rdquo; clenching the end of my mother&rsquo;s checkered skirt, babbling about wanting the &ldquo;sun, sun, sun&rdquo; to play under. Sure, my mom was born in September (so I couldn&rsquo;t tell her how much I disliked her birth month), but other than that, there wasn&rsquo;t necessarily a holiday for me to celebrate (sorry again, mom). I would dress up as the classic witch in October, my aunt would stuff the 20-pound turkey in November, and Santa would come to town in December. But September? September meant school, which meant less time under the &ldquo;sun, sun, sun&rdquo; and more time indoors. Bathing suit season&hellip; over. &ldquo;F.R.I.E.N.D.S.&rdquo; binge watching season&hellip; in the past.&nbsp;<em>My<\/em> birthday festivities&hellip; sweet July memories.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>After beginning college though, my thoughts surrounding September began to change.&nbsp; The first letter of this once horrifying month no longer stood for &ldquo;School Starts&rdquo; or &ldquo;Stress Strikes.&rdquo; I now began classes in August (which I have since nicknamed, &ldquo;The Aggravation Awareness Month&rdquo;), so I couldn&rsquo;t really blame September for the commencement of my &ldquo;scholastic sentence.&rdquo; On my bus rides to the Lower East Side, I began to take note of all the cool things to do in this now <em>cooler<\/em> weather. Smorgasburg was taking over the East River State Park. Madison Square Eats was buzzing in the Flatiron District. EZOO was blowing up Randall&rsquo;s Island. Apple picking at Melville farm&hellip; why not?&nbsp; City walking tours&hellip; it wouldn&rsquo;t be too hot to do one or two, or even five. San Gennaro Festival? Yes, please!&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tanning in the pool on my beloved pizza floatie defined relaxation, but, as you can tell from the exclamation points above, I sought excitement and, after doing my Instagram and Facebook research, a whole shipload of it docked in September.<\/p>\n<p>I fell in love with the weather&rsquo;s hybrid nature. Technically, we were still in the summer months, so I could pull out the shorts if I needed to; however, I could snuggle into a &ldquo;September sweater&rdquo; and avoid the &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you hot?&rdquo; stares. Fall would roll in on the 21<sup>st<\/sup> of the month, but I could unofficially celebrate weeks beforehand. I stocked up at the Bath &amp; Body Works Fall Season sale and sprayed my room (and myself) with &ldquo;Champagne Apple&rdquo; and &ldquo;Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte.&rdquo; Normally, I would have waited until mid-October to do so, but I didn&rsquo;t have to: things were on sale from now&hellip; in September.&nbsp; It was a (dollar) sign.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Fall Fashion&rdquo;&hellip; I began to develop my own sense of style. On my bus rides and strolls to class, I would take pictures of the colors\/tones that I found in nature and write down outfit ideas in the planner I once reserved for &ldquo;September struggles&rdquo; in high school. My purchases incorporated a lot of hues borrowed from the summer, like light yellows and blues, but mixed in some &ldquo;Fallish&rdquo; ones as well. I wasn&rsquo;t too deep into the &ldquo;burgundy-red-wicked&rdquo; color yet, so there was a lot of opportunity to experiment. And the white-to-jean-post-Labor Day-switch was a holiday in and of itself. I would celebrate with nothing other than a shopping spree, which sounded like a segway into the season.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Three years since I reconciled my differences with September and to tell you the truth, I think our relationship is better than ever. I relax in the pre-midterm phase, explore the cityscape, and eat a rather concerning amount of pumpkin scones from Starbucks. To end this on a rather clich&eacute; note, I don&rsquo;t think I want to be woken up &ldquo;when September ends,&rdquo; but rather right before it begins so I can enjoy all that it is and has. It&rsquo;s a pretty &ldquo;special&rdquo; month, unlike &ldquo;The Aggravation Awareness Month.&rdquo;&nbsp; I simply dread August. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the pre-school age of two to the high school age of 18, I dreaded the month of September. If you don&rsquo;t believe me, check out the video of me wearing sunglasses during nap time at &ldquo;Miss Rita&rsquo;s,&rdquo; clenching the end of my mother&rsquo;s checkered skirt, babbling about wanting the &ldquo;sun, sun, sun&rdquo; to play&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":703,"featured_media":8709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1596],"class_list":["post-8680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/703"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}