October is the cruelest month

There are homemade donuts in my office and they are killing me figuratively and literally. I can't stop eating them. They are my Achilles heel. They are smothered in sugar and dripping in delicious deep fried fatty goodness. And they taste great with some real non pasteurized hot apple cider. O Heaven! October is the month of Apple Pickin' Festivals. Growing up, we went to the Graves Mountain Lodge every October and ate barf in the barn (my brother's endearing term for Brunswick stew), apple cider, apple sauce, apple butter, and cornbread, and then we picked more apples and we played in the creek and looked for rocks and ate candy sticks and listened to football on the radio on the way home. One year I bought a magnifying glass from the local flea market and burnt ants with it till my Mother yelled at me. Some years they had a bluegrass band. Some years they had a fire in the ginormous fireplace in the lodge. Once they stopped letting you get free second helpings of Brunswick stew, my Dad would thereafter always gripe to them about not getting seconds anymore. During college, I remember going to Carter's Mountain outside of Charlottesville and picking apples in October. And they had warm freshly made donuts and hot apple cider. God bless them. And this is all to say, I love October and donuts and apples and Fall. And the Ironman comeback starts in November!