It is currently 102 degrees outside. It feels like 111. And according to the forecast, Texas has apparently decided that for the foreseeable future we will be living somewhere between the surface of the sun and Satan’s screened-in porch.

We’re looking at actual temperatures between 100 and 105, with heat indexes wandering into numbers I don’t personally believe should exist outside of an oven. I walked outside earlier to check the garden and brush the pool and immediately regretted every decision that had led me there. My face melted. My lungs filed a formal complaint with HR. My thighs started sweating in places thighs should not legally be allowed to sweat. The air itself feels like it’s trying to fight me.

So naturally, my children have decided it’s fall.

Not “fall is coming.” Not “we’re excited for fall.” Fall has apparently already arrived, according to two people whose combined age doesn’t hit double digits. Lynnlee and Harper have begun begging, pleading, plotting, negotiating, manipulating, and when those methods failed, simply taking matters into their own tiny hands and dragging decorations out of storage themselves like tiny, determined looters. Pumpkins. Scarecrows. Halloween decorations. Harvest decorations. Creepy things. Cute things. Thanksgiving things. Basically anything in this house that is orange, brown, black, burgundy, or vaguely suggests that somewhere on this planet a leaf may eventually die.

And here’s the annoying part: they’re not wrong. This is historically about when I start decorating. I usually bring the fall stuff out around the time school starts, and by early to mid-September the house has fully committed to its autumn personality. Then things trickle outside toward the end of September, because we live in an HOA, and apparently a decorative pumpkin appearing on a porch six minutes too early has the structural integrity to collapse the housing market. I don’t make the rules. I was actually on the HOA board, which should tell you everything you need to know about how seriously any of us take this.

My children know the schedule. Fall comes out, then Halloween, then Thanksgiving gets roughly seventeen minutes of recognition before November 1 arrives and I lose my entire mind, because on November 1 fall is dead to me. Not sleeping. Not resting. Dead. I don’t care that Thanksgiving hasn’t happened yet. I don’t care that Christmas is technically still two months out. We have spent a small fortune on Christmas decorations. We have inherited Christmas decorations from relatives who probably meant it as a kindness. We have purchased more Christmas decorations because at some point we looked at the Christmas decorations we already owned and thought, you know what this house needs? Another tree. Christmas goes into every nook, every cranny, every corner, inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs. If something sits still long enough in November, there is a real possibility I will wrap garland around it and call it decor.

Given the money we’ve thrown at this problem, I intend to get my full return on investment between November 1 and January 1, which means fall has a very specific, non-negotiable window in this house. And apparently my children have been paying attention, even though they cannot yet tie their own shoes.

The only issue is that my brain still associates fall with a completely different set of facts. Fall is coffee on the porch in the morning. Crisp air. Cool evenings. Opening the back door and feeling that first little chill. Throwing on a cardigan because you’re mildly, pleasantly cold, instead of because you’re trying to prevent second-degree burns from your own patio furniture. The smell of leaves and cinnamon and pumpkin bread. Sitting outside without wondering if the metal chair is about to brand your ass like cattle.

That is fall. Fall is not walking outside and getting slapped across the face by the heat like you owe it money. Fall is not checking the garden while genuinely wondering if the tomatoes are close to spontaneous combustion. Fall is not brushing pool algae while sweat runs down your spine like you’re being slowly basted. Fall is not opening the weather app, seeing 102 with a feels-like of 111, and then watching a three-year-old walk past you cradling a pumpkin like it’s a newborn.

And yet here we are.

Harper turns four in a matter of days. Lynnlee is six. And when you’re six and almost four, fall isn’t a temperature, it’s a timeframe. They don’t care what the thermometer says. They don’t care that Texas never got the seasonal memo, or that Texas seems to actively resent the concept of seasons in general. They know summer happened. They know their birthdays and school starting mean the good stuff is close. They know Mommy starts pulling out pumpkins around now, and they know that somewhere in this house are boxes full of tiny scarecrows, witches, ghosts, skeletons, and leaves, all patiently waiting to tell them something exciting is coming.

So while I’m standing there thinking absolutely not, it is ten million degrees outside, they’re thinking it’s time. And honestly, maybe they’re right. Maybe childhood seasons were never supposed to be set by weather. Maybe they’re set by tradition. By knowing which box Mommy pulls out next. By remembering exactly where the little pumpkin goes on the shelf. By getting excited over decorations they’ve seen every single year, decorations that have no business still being magical and yet somehow still are. By knowing Halloween comes next, then Thanksgiving, then waking up on November 1 to discover their mother has been fully and completely possessed by the spirit of Clark Griswold.

One day they won’t be six and almost four. One day nobody is going to sneak into my storage boxes and drag out scarecrows because they physically cannot wait one more second. One day I’ll probably be standing in a much quieter house, pulling those same pumpkins out myself, and I’ll remember two little girls who did not give a single solitary damn that it was 102 degrees outside. They just knew it was fall.

So fine. Bring me the pumpkins.

But the outside decorations are waiting until September. I have standards. I have an HOA. And, more importantly, I am not putting a scarecrow in the front yard while the heat index is 120 degrees. Even he deserves better than that.