It's all good because the only cold that's here right now is mine

Over the weekend, the virus I've been "entertaining" finally kicked in. Honestly, it's really nothing more than a cold and it's not some foreign disease but rather something more common contracted from a sixteen-month-old child.

Aside from a slightly heavier-than-normal head and aforementioned child screaming into my ear just for fun, the weekend has been the September ideal you might always dream about. The house is clean, the laundry is finished, football has been watched, the dog was walked and pizza was eaten.

And the point of all this? Well, I think I am accepting that Fall is here. We will not utter the words "Summer is over" because that is entirely unnecessary. Rather, we will just say we like football and changing leaves and the Indian Summer-ish days that are upon us.

Mostly, I am loving it. Even when I'm seeing things through a cold-medicine haze, when you consider that the team won, there's word that my sister's husband is coming home from Iraq by Christmas, and there are beautiful things all around, it's not hazy at all. In fact, it's actually quite clear how good everything seems to be.

Super

Over the last couple weeks, I've been invited to a couple Super Bowl parties. Yes, the invites were nice but I didn't accept either. I'm not sure why, I just didn't feel up to it. Imagine that. So, I declined and carried on figuring I'd at least avoided the over-comsumption of food and drink and could therefore continue down this path of succeeding to be a smaller version of myself.

Then, while driving in highway traffic the other day, I felt the need to have family around me. It has been a while since we were all together and I miss that. There are also a few friends I haven't seen in a while- I miss them, too. So, after a careful twenty-three seconds of thought, I started making calls.

Thirty minutes later, I was now hosting a Super Bowl party. The funniest part of this is, I didn't even know what time the game started. "Show up whenever!" I told them. I'm sure they'll figure it out.

I've planned some food, some drink, even ordered three different flavors of "wings"- something I have never served at my house, ever. On Saturday I'll brave the crowds and shop for other snacks and, yes, beer. And Sunday, I'll have a house full of people who all accepted an invite to a party I'm throwing because I didn't want to go to anyone else's. Strange how that worked out.

Oh yes, and I'm no longer worried about the over-consumption of food because the game starts around 4:00 p.m. or something like that which means almost an entire day beforehand is available for the gym. By kickoff, I'll be guiltless.