It’s times like these when I miss Tennessee the most. No, not because this is the time when school starts ramping up and all the assignments and the drama make me homesick, simply because it’s September, and fall officially starts tomorrow. I called my dad this weekend, and he told me how the weather was in the 70s back in Nashville, and I nearly threw my phone through the window.

I love San Antonio, I really do, but I get so sad living here this time of year. It takes so long for the weather to stop getting all the way up into the 90s, and some of us just weren’t built for the prolonged summer. Some of us were built for cute sweaters and warm drinks and jumping in piles of leaves.

Anyone with any ounce of common sense should agree that fall is just objectively the best season. Summer and winter temperatures are too extreme, and there’s just something in the fall air that isn’t in the spring air. Not to mention the crazy spring allergies.

The mellow orange and brown decor that goes up in the fall and the smell of cinnamon from all the candles and those brooms outside of grocery stores are so warm and comforting you can almost put aside your stress over getting COVID. There’s something about putting pumpkins all over your place that just makes the space happier. The fall semester comes with so much stress that sometimes the only thing holding me together is being able to put up some fun decorations and curl up with a blanket.

Here in San Antonio, we have to do everything we can to make it feel like fall because God knows we’re not getting the pleasantly cool temperatures and beautiful multicolored leaves that I’d be getting back home (I promise I’m not bitter). Get a cinnamon candle, put up Halloween decorations, buy some of those Pillsbury Halloween sugar cookies and drink your weight in pumpkin spice lattes and apple cider. Embrace the Christian Girl Autumn lifestyle and pay homage to the fabulous Caitlin Covington of the viral pictures and trans creator Isabella Markel who coined the term and shot Covington to fame in the first place.

And as someone who spends probably too much time watching movies and TV, I cannot recommend putting together a fall watchlist enough. “Gilmore Girls,” “Over the Garden Wall,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “When Harry Met Sally” are all fall classics, along with all the Halloween favorites. Mysteries, fantasies and period pieces make for some great fall rewatches — “Knives Out” with all the cable-knit sweaters or “Pride and Prejudice” with its lush landscapes. And take my word for it, put “Twilight” on your list for the perfect fall soundtrack.

Sometimes the only way to recapture the autumns of my childhood while I’m here in San Antonio is to watch them on the screen. If I can’t have the Tennessee weather, I can at least have “Twilight” and a cup of apple cider.