It’s depression season.

The leaves are piled on the lawn in heaps of wet muck and will stay right there until spring. It gets dark right after lunch and stays that way for about 20 hours, it seems.

My old friend the furnace is back and running all night when I am too lazy to feed the wood stove its daily helping of $220-a-cord wood. Let’s just imagine what the heating bills will be like this winter.

I try to wear shorts just as long as I can because it feels so good, sort of like Huck Finn going barefoot until it hurt. Well, those days are clearly gone when it requires long pants and a winter coat just to retrieve the newspaper, 30 feet away.

I may have to put my sandals away, too.

It’s going to get colder and colder.

Election season goes on and on until we are sick of all the candidates on both sides. I think we should adopt the English model (not Twiggy) that restricts campaigning to a few precious weeks. If I see sheriff candidate Al Ockenfels and host David Emery on my television one more time, I will “Elvis” the set with my service revolver (if I had one).

Thank God for the New England Patriots. They are coming together just in time to stave off even more serious winter blues. The Celtics will never be interesting again, and the Bruins? Who cares? The beloved Red Sox are far, far away. I check for the spring training schedule each morning.

Depressing.

Sugarloaf used to be the can]t-miss, never-fail antidote to the approach of cabin fever. The sheer exhilaration of screaming (well, coasting) down a ski trail will certainly get the wheezing heart pumping and lift those weary spirits. But the combination of a three-hour (one way) drive, the outrageous ski ticket prices, plus 66-year-old knees makes that endeavor highly questionable.

With gas and lunch, we are talking an easy $100.

Depressing.

I could dedicate the approaching winter to getting in Olympic shape, then spend two hours a day on the book I have been threatening to write for, oh, 30 years.

Right.

The last time I decided to get in shape, I tore into the YMCA Nautilus machines until my knees felt like they were going to fall off. Moderation in all things. That’s my motto. I actually had to get crutches from the hospital and walked with a limp for weeks.

Forget the Y. I just pay for the membership in case I ever want to go again. And I wonder why I never have any money.

Even the forced marches that Blue Eyes foisted upon us have been suspended, first by bullets whizzing through the Waldoboro woods and eventually by bitter cold.

It’s time to fill the wood stove with $5 logs, put (another) $100 order into Amazon.com for a few more murder mysteries, pull the afghans out from behind the couch and put the kettle on.

Four months until spring training.

Depressing.

I think I will buy two Powerball tickets this week.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.