This time of year

Annoying things about fall and winter:

• Having to bundle up until I look like a large round barrel.
• Pumpkin-flavor mania: pumpkin lattes, pumpkin Blizzards at Dairy Queen, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin-cranberry porkchops, pumpkin candy. blecch to all of those.
  
• Coldness in general, and not being able to get my hands warm.
• Halloween.
  
• The general idea among most conservative churches that Halloween is pure evil, resulting in so many "Harvest Parties" where kids get dressed up, play games, and get candy anyways.
  
• Being late to work because the snow plows haven't been out yet.
• When hundreds of dry leaves blow across the street looking like so much like little suicidal lemmings that I feel compelled to brake to avoid killing them.
• All the stupid limp scarecrows people drag out of hibernation each fall to lay slumped on their front porches against a hay bale or other nonsensical decoration. Plus, this most often occurs in urban areas where most people have never seen a scarecrow or a hay bale in its natural environment.
• When it's snowy: not being in total control of my car every millisecond of a trip.
• Bland, monochromatic skies and scenery.
  
• White toilet-paper ghosts hanging from trees that get all wet and pulpy when it rains, and plastic-trash-bag pumpkins filled with moldy leaves that stink like a sewer when it rains.
• Snow that's covered with car exhaust so it's brown and slimy.
• Bare, dead, sad trees and bushes that look like leftovers from a nuclear fallout.
  

Please feel free to add your own...this list isn't exhaustive by any means. I may add to it at a later time, too. Sometime, maybe I'll post what I do like about this time of year...but it wouldn't be interesting. Those lists are usually sappy or, as my friends like to hear me say, "big buckets of cheese." later.