On Long Island where I live, my favorite months are May and October. In May the world has turned green; the air is fresh, the smells delicious; in October the world is tip toeing to the bedroom of winter but the days are still comfortably warm, the nights comfortably cool, and the trees starting to turn their magnificent colors before beginning their descent into winter.

You can keep July and August; they are my least favorite months. I do not like the heat; I hate the humidity even more. But bigger than that – far bigger than that – I hate the bugs of summer. For some strange reason bugs love to bite me.

If I go out in the morning, in the day, in the evening, I will come back with bug bites on my hands and arms – itchy, awful bug bites that always turn a nasty shade of red. My wife, the beautiful AP can be walking with me and she doesn’t get a single one. Yellow Jackets have made beelines to sting me. They have traveled across the yard to nail me with their stingers. Did you know that the New York Metropolitan area’s Yellow Jackets are not from America? No sir; they came from Germany, on ships, which landed in New York Harbor sometime in the early 1900’s, displaced (make that read: conquered) the native population of Yellow Jackets which were a calmer species and now these "aliens" rule the roost and attack me!

I also don’t like the dogs of July and August; they seem a little nastier than during the other months of the year. I used to be a dog lover – man’s best friend and all that – but I no longer fall into that category. I can’t take the smell of those creatures now and I dislike their slobbering mouths, especially when they are trying to lick your face off.

We have a menagerie of dogs in my area. Some are pleasant; but some are the scariest creatures you can imagine. For some unfathomable reason –well, stupidity is probably the reason – some people have these killer dogs like the seemingly mutated German Shepherds that are nothing like Rin Tin Tin, Rottweilers, Dobermans and the horrifying Pit Bulls.

The closest of the killer dogs to me is this weird looking German Shepherd that always lunges at anything that is the least lungeble at – cars, other dogs, children, airplanes and me. I try to avoid walking on the block where this beast resides but its miserable owner keeps walking the damn creature on my block, sometimes in front of my house. I am hoping this monster gets loose from its chain, lunges at a Hummer, and gets his squish-uppance.

And there is always the ploppy who confidently intones, "The Pit Bull isn’t dangerous; you just have to know how to handle them." Some totally tattooed guy in town who delighted in walking his foamingly ferocious Pit Bull would say such things until the stinking dog ripped his arm off below the elbow one hot August morning. Yeah, you just have to know how to handle them. I ask this simple question of you: Why bother?

The summer, winter, spring and fall also bring out the drag racers. I don’t live too far from Kennedy Airport where the Belt Parkway has a service road often used by drag racers to gun their cars at death defying speeds to beat other drivers who are also gunning their cars at death defying speeds.

I used to own a theatre company and I had an employee who raced. He told me that it was safe because "you just have to know how to handle your car." He is now buried at the Pinelawn Cemetery which is about 15 miles from my home. He has a beautiful grave and everyone cried at his funeral. They could not have an open casket at his wake because there weren’t too many pieces of him still intact from his crash.

I dislike March and I am always disappointed by April, which is surely the "cruelest month." April sounds as if it is going to be a beautifully blooming month but it doesn’t bloom until its last week. I like November because of Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday; I enjoy December because of the Christmas season; January is blah and I really can’t stand New Years Eve (even though it is in December) because New Years is the phoniest holiday of them all.

I actually enjoy February because while it is cold, the light of day is getting longer and every so often there is a small short-lived scent of spring whiffing through the air. It is also the month of my anniversary to the beautiful AP – on Valentines Day no less. (I can never forget my anniversary – smart move on my part!)

September, so-so; June, a prelude to the bugs and out-of-sorts dogs of summer and that is my summation of the months of the year as I see them.