In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be turning the clocks back. The end of the day will rapidly darken long before we reach our cars to drive home from work with headlights on. Until then, I believe Mother Nature is making it her mission to mess with us.

A couple of weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, we finally made it to an apple orchard where we munched, judged and bagged a variety of delicious apples. Actually, we didn’t pick any Delicious, but that’s another story.

The three of us dove into our bag of freshly made cider donuts for some motivation before carefully choosing which apples would make the best pie and apple crisp. It was cloudy and cool but not uncomfortable — a perfect, semi-crisp almost fall kind of day.

The next day it was summer again. That Sunday afternoon, after Spouse hit the road for his week-long training, Second Born and I gobbled up free ice cream at a local dairy stand that was closing for the season. How ironic that they would be ending their ice cream offerings on a day that felt more like late June than October.

Funny how only a few degrees made such a difference in clothing and attitude. Does anyone else have the furnace and the ceiling fan on at the same time? It’s blanket weather and kick-the-sheets-off degrees in the same eight hours.

This has been the most fickle month temperature-wise that I can remember in quite a while, and it definitely puts a strain on my shabby-not-chic wardrobe. I stand in front of my closet in the morning pulling out long-sleeved shirts. Once I make it to the office it’s not long before I’m pushing those sleeves up. Within an hour, I’m pulling a sweater over my shoulders, and the dance continues all day long due to differing opinions on whether we need air conditioning, a door open, or a space heater.

Strange weather is not foreign to us. Spouse and I are those people who are woo-hooing out the window in March when the thermometer hits 45. We have vivid memories of sitting on cold bleachers with winter jackets on in May when our kids played softball. Because of office deliveries, I was witness to the UPS drivers’ challenge a couple of winters ago to wear shorts as long as possible. A couple of them never stopped.

With Halloween around the corner I’m sure parents will be paying attention to the forecast, to determine if their youngsters will be comfortable with just a costume or if they should have gotten a size large enough to fit a winter jacket underneath. When I was a kid my sister made a pumpkin costume for me one year. My pumpkin shell was stuffed with newspapers to fill it out, which was nice and warm. My legs, however, were frozen in thin green tights. I was the shakiest pumpkin you had ever seen.

There is more bundling up these days but we still have a shot at Indian Summer, that period of weirdly warm, hazy weather that sometimes occurs mid-November. When I looked up Indian Summer on The Old Farmer’s Almanac website, I learned the early New England settlers deemed it that because, while they welcomed the colder weather that prevented Indians from attacking, the short spurt of warmer temps was enough to encourage them to hit the settlers with their best shot once more before the real winter.

I guess we need to dress for all contingencies this time of year. Rather than hoping we’re dressed for the right weather, it just might be easier to carry around a backpack of clothes for the next month.