October is my very favorite month of the year for several reasons. One, of course, is Halloween. Another is my birthday (which was Tuesday, by the way … I'm 17 now!). The other is the colder weather that the month brings.

I really love cool weather. I don't like it when it's freezing cold and my fingers feel like they're going to fall off, and I don't like it when it's 100 degrees and I can't move without feeling as if I'm melting.

I love it when the leaves turn orange and gold and start falling off the trees, giving me the urge to go out and dance around in them. I'm really not sure why. I guess this weather just makes me happy enough to do some very odd things.

I also love the need to wear nice warm jackets. At an OkGO (a band I highly recommend for good-mood music) concert last April, I bought a fantastically wonderful hoodie that I have been waiting to have a reason to wear. The inside is all fuzzy, and if I choose to put up the hood, it provides me with a convenient signal for everyone to go away and leave me alone, or an easy way to send the message of "I feel like crap today."

Finally, I have my chance, and every time it drops below 80 I wear it until I feel like I cannot possibly wear it any longer or I will die of heat stroke (in fact, I'm wearing it right now). Of course, in the infernos we call classrooms, I often have to just rest my weary head on it, but I still carry it everywhere with me.

I also love the smell of cold weather. That might not make a lot of sense to you. Weather has a smell? But it makes sense to me. Summer smells like sweat, chlorine, and watermelon. Now, don't get me wrong, watermelon smells good on its own, but paired with the other two … not so much.

Winter smells like nothing, because my nose is too freaking cold to smell anything. Spring smells like green things, bugs, and rain. These aren't as bad, but I still enjoy the smell of fall better, because it smells like pumpkins, camp-fire smoke, candy corn, and my musty attic as Halloween decorations are brought down (this is especially bad for me, as the entrance to the attic is in my room). While the musty attic thing isn't so nice, all the other things are lovely, and they make me extremely happy.

I just really love the month of October. November's not bad, either, but the weather starts to get a little too cold and school starts to get harder and more stressful as teachers and the overachieving students start thinking "OMG EXAMS!!"

Plus, Halloween has got to be one of the coolest holidays ever. What other day of the year can you dress up as a pimp or something and not get funny looks from people? I can't believe it's less than a month away and I've still not quite decided what I'm going to be!

I must go search Halloween costumes on Google …