Smell the air, see the light coming through branches perceptibly dulled, though yet green; step outside and smell the light night air, with just the beginnings of fall-feel to its breezes. Early in the morning when you’re out for your daily constitutional (you have begun your walking routine, yes?), listen, and you’ll hear fewer bees and the robins, if chirping at all, sound less cheery.

They may not lack for good cheer so much as for a certain expectation — that tone particular to spring, which recalls, each year, the approach of another season of warmth and no jackets; of lengthening days, stretching ahead into the vague distance of time. Robins tell us we need not, briefly, try to remember, to keep in mind, Time as a Commodity to be saved, or spent, wasted, made up, lost or — wonder of wonders – found.

Stores are selling school supplies now – have been for a month – and school clothes, as if children actually wore to school anything different than for whatever else it is they do (not counting changing seasons and sizes). But for the AD/HD woman, notoriously pulling together the school stuff on Labor Day and not before, these abominable early, unnatural signs of the changing seasons can be a boon.

Instead of lamenting the shortness of summer, or dreading the last-minute shopping expeditions when the “good stuff” has already been taken, why not beat yourself to the punch? Make it a personal record this year: pads and pencils, notebooks and markers and that bizarre little entry on every annual list nowadays (was it on there thirty years ago? forty? I do not remember it)—“1 box full size tissues.”

(And, given the tardiness of this month’s magazine, you can use the Internet and let your fingers really do the shopping, with free delivery often thrown in.)

For the women among us who haven’t got children? It’s a great time to stock up on your own personal supply of file folders, binders and dividers, alphabetized; of very cool markers in shades Crayola hadn’t thought of when “Burnt Sienna” was, next to “Midnight Blue,” among my handful of favorites.

If you don’t have children, have you seen “Gel pens?” Have you used those pens and pencils with soft grips? A mechanical pencil? When is the last time you used a protractor, or a compass? Those were fun, especially when you had a box of 64, and funner now with colored pencils. More than that, you knew exactly where to color what, symmetrically, without laboring over the deciding part.

If you’re a reader who can’t decide what to read, check a “Recommended Reading List” put out by a school or library, from middle school on up; if you can’t decide from that, start at the top. One proviso: if you do not like a book after thirty pages, stop reading it. Your mother and your English teacher are not here to chide you, and you needn’t remember the author’s name. Then, go on to the next book. Stop. Start. Read three at a time – there’s no rule against that. You’re a grown-up now, and you can read books however you want to.

“Back To School” is the artificial counterpart of the robin’s chirp on a spring morning: a general announcement of a long stretch of changed weather ahead. Go buy what you need for fall and winter; now, while you have Time to Think Ahead, Plan, Pay for it Before December purchases.

This issue of ncgiadd brings you another short and razor-sharp tale of hard won success from Maurine Harrison, an announcement of scholarship money for everyday successes by kids who often must work harder to get the same results, lots of medication advice from Pat Quinn, practical health and weight management counsel geared for the AD/HD woman, a window provided for us by Kathleen Nadeau into the controversy brewing as a result of our increased visibility as females with identifiable AD/HD.

Happy reading! And don’t forget to write.