I'm ready to fall and that's okay....

My window is open and there is a bite in the air tonight. It brings the promise of fall, and hot apple cider, and cozying up next to a bonfire in a big, warm sweatshirt. Halloween and haunted houses. All-night movie marathons and spending hours in a coffee shop working on homework. Giant scarves and clear skies.

I love fall, yet it always makes me a little sad. Maybe it's because it's an ending - the end of summer, the end of freedom, the end of warm weather. Maybe because it's a time of year when it's better to be with someone...to have someone to cuddle up with when the nights are just a little too chilly - someone to carve pumpkins with and be the other half of a cheesy couple's Halloween costume.

Or maybe because it means winter is right around the corner, and the world is about to stop for a few months. I love all four seasons, but I wish winter lasted a week. Or two. Not for five months. I would be happy with snow for Christmas, and then right back up to being 50+ degrees. It's not just the snow - the cold is incredibly rough on my joints, and every winter I go through pain pills and IcyHot like they're going out of style.

But then again, surviving another winter just makes spring all the more wonderful.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fall. Football. Apple wine. Big warm sweaters. Beautiful colors. Wrapping up in comfy blankets and reading for hours. Feeling like, even though all the green is gone, that the world is about to be fresh and clean and new again.

I'm so ready for it.

But I'm really going to miss my flip-flops.