Mother Nature was right on cue, as we turned over the calendar page, and she provided us a cool morning to launch into the month of September, the first of the “ber” months … you know, that time of the year that causes us to say “brrrrrrr” more, as we morph into each successive month.

I had a hybrid trek this morning, which began with a roundtrip to the dentist’s office and happily there were no cavities or minor mischief going on in my mouth.

Next, I took the car for a spin and headed to Meijer to beat the crowd which will hustle there to reap the bargains during the pre-holiday sales tomorrow.

As I meandered through the aisles at Meijer, clearly it was all about the upcoming weekend … college football begins with MSU Friday and U of M on Saturday, so, the shelves were chock full of goodies for tailgating, the Labor Day holiday, and, oh yes … back to school.

The first Honeycrisp apples of the season have hit the produce section, but the still-warmish afternoon temps make you think along the line of watermelon, rather than crisp apples.   No sign of caramel apples yet though.  I imagine if you ate a caramel apple outside on a warm day, that gooey caramel, laden with peanuts, would be dripping off the apple, a scenario similar to trying to beat the clock when eating a top-heavy ice cream cone before it totally melts on a hot day.

Those Honeycrisp apples might be the smartest treat to buy, but those neat rows of crackly bags of crunchy and salty snacks, might call out to you instead.  They are mere teasers to test your resolve.  Just in case you haven’t had your S’mores fix yet this Summer, there were plenty of graham crackers to smoosh down on pillowy-soft marshmallows and expertly melt with chocolate bars.

The back-to-school supplies are quickly dwindling from the stock they hand on hand right after the 4th of July, and, even since my visit last week. Meijer is anxious for everyone to scoop up those supplies, so they can lay out their extensive Halloween costumes, candy and yard accessories.  Once we dispense with Labor Day, the Fall harvest swag comes out in full force, and, soon thereafter, the frost is on the pumpkin and Halloween decorating begins in earnest.

I still got my four miles in, albeit in two different locales, and, now I have one more mile to go to reach that threshold of 500 miles – I could have done it today I guess, but I’ll linger on the topic of that milestone more in tomorrow’s post.