No me gusta.

So here's a funny thing about living in the southern hemisphere: seasonal affective disorder is totally upside down.  Like, there's just no point in being depressed in January, despite overspending on Christmas presents and siphoning gallons of whipped cream directly into your esophagus.  It's summertime in January.  All that post-hoc rationalization that northerners go through to explain why January sucks so much actually becomes pretty transparent.  It's not that they're suddenly roly-polies in elastic waist pants; it's that sunlight is never actually hitting their skin.  They can and should boohoo, but not because it's January.  Because it's the dark of winter.

Now, me, well.  Not that you asked, but anyway.  I've never been a big fan of springtime.  As a kid, spring meant Easter and way too much church.  You want me to dye an egg, hide it in the sun and then eat it?  Foul.  As a teenager, spring meant watching everyone around me strip down to pastel shorts.  I spent months with eyes averted.  Later, I got hay fever.  Fuck spring, I thought.  It's a loser's season.  Made for weaklings in pink.

As it happens, my birthday is in October.  Personally, over a plentiful number of years, I've enjoyed the experience of birth and some sort of metaphorical rebirth in the fall.  Sure, it's crispy and cool.  Sure, it's getting dark a little earlier.  But, it's also a very clever palette that fall brings.  Much more complementary to my skin tones and soothing to a rational mind.  (Yes, if you prefer the peachy pastels of the primavera, I'm judging you.  You want to punch me with that pink satchel?  Because I promise I'll get ink on it, pronto.)  Spring is fragile, undeveloped, thin.  Fall is hardy, robust, and dependable.  You can't jump into a pile of cherry blossoms.  

So, now I'm confronted with anemic spring hosting my birthday.  And I don't want to appear ungracious (though I absolutely am), so I'm contemplating an antipodean revision.  Is it okay to celebrate six months hence?

See, I don't want to get the spring mopes while I try to get amped for cake.  I want to ridicule the transience of the flowers, go get waxed and prepare for summer.  And when the time comes, when the air cools and the leaves start to change, then I'll be happy to do the good kind of deep thinking that birthdays inspire.  Yes, older.  Yes, wiser.  Yes, cooler and richer and stronger and cozier.  Like fall.