I just completed something I hadn’t partaken in since before Memorial Day – a weekend in Manhattan.

I woke up on Saturday morning surprisingly rested and began getting ready for work. If I were in my apartment it had to be a weekday, right?

Wrong.

I came face to face with the reality that despite the humidity, summer’s technically over. Share house keys have been turned back in to landlords. Bathing suits have been stashed away till next year. I’d no longer be performing a weekly relay race to Long Island and back. I had so much SPARE TIME!

Summer passes in a hurried blur because when you’re away every weekend, many mundane activities are nixed from your life. No need to stalk up on groceries because you’re going to be purchasing twelve dollar bagels out east. No need to do laundry since the only outfit you’ll need is a bikini. Weekend life is all fun. No work.

As I pattered around wondering what to do with myself, the tranquility of my apartment began to freak me out. In the Hamptons, you greet the morning surrounded by friends (and friends of friends) and your day proceeds in summer camp-style with group activities, organized outings and field trips to places Surf Lodge, mini-golf or Sunset Beach. The idea of facing eight, long, solitary hours until evening socializing time seemed absurd. I tried to remember:

What did I do on weekends pre-summer? How did I occupy this void of time?

Did I go to the gym?

Schedule brunch dates?

Did I clean? Was I a cleaning-type?

Did I lounge around my apartment reading?

Did I actually do work at my computer as if it were a work day?

Did I run errands?

Laundry?

The movies?

How did I not want to shove a pencil into my retina?

Making this seasonal adjustment even more traumatizing, hurricane Hanna was causing a torrential downpour. Leaving my apartment to meet up with anybody in an attempt to soothe my PHD (Post Hamptons Depression) was impossible, unless I could find one of those full body ponchos they sell at amusement parks and a snorkel.

For those of you unfamiliar, I define PHD as “a general feeling of ickyness and intense longing for all things Hamptons.” This could range from a desire to inhaled non-polluted air to a craving for a self-charred hamburger. Symptoms include being generally mopey, staring at walls, attempting to recreate Hamptons summer experiences that fall short (running in Central Park is NOT the same as jogging through corn fields) or a loss or quick increase in appetite.

Coping mechanisms? Well. The only sure fire cure is to get back out into the countryside. Otherwise PHD usually subsides with time…and a lot of TV watching.

How did I ultimately manage to pass the day?

Errands at Duane Reade, laundry, and reading for self-improvement. This is what my weekend life has been reduced to: Household shopping, chores and self-help. And to think that just the weekend before I jogged on the beach, relished in fresh air and open space, played volleyball and swam around in salt water humming songs from the Little Mermaid.

It’s going to be a long winter.