Crystal flakes form in space before floating down from cloudy skies.

Soon blankets of white coat sidewalks like icing and frosty corners freeze in shady yards by the shed. Scarves twist tightly around necks, noses sniffle and turn red, and everyone walks the streets with wide eyes and snowy lashes. Boots slip and slide on the sidewalk, mittens swipe seats in the park, and branches glow under a silent new moonlit world.

Sometimes the first snowfall gets your bones excited about everything the season brings — family moments, quiet times, holiday shopping, and grandma’s cooking. It’s a symbol of venturing out into a new world and bunkering into an old one.

When the snow flies down for the first time everything slows down around you and nostalgia bombs burst in your brain … of slip-sliding to school on sidewalks, slushy snowball fights in the park, and sticky mittens rolling snowmen on the front lawn…

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

Life’s too short to make plans all the time. Just do what you want and enjoy it.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Water, water, everywhere.

Most of our brains and our blood and our bodies are water. Most of our babies and our beagles and our baths are water. Water rinses apples and washes cars. Water steams carrots and cures SARS. (Study pending.)

Yes, water cures thirst, shaves legs, and grows plants. Water flushes toilets, washes hair, and ships pants. We cannonball into pools, we float off the docks, we ice down our drinks, and we rinse all our socks.

We love water but somehow there’s one major moment where we dread Nature’s Best Liquid. Yes, I’m talking about rain, people — because you know as well as I do that when the skies split and the clouds crack everyone scowls and scampers for cover.

And that’s exactly what makes it great when once in a while you just, you know, don’t. That’s what makes it so great when it starts pouring on you and you just stop caring altogether.

Jumping in puddles, laughing with friends, chilled to the bone, soaked till the end — yes, when you’re getting wet and loving it suddenly soaked shoes, squishy worms, and rain hair mean nothing. You’re a gorilla in the rainforest, you’re a lion in the monsoon, you’re just another animal on Earth soaking and swirling and spinning and twirling in your beautifully wet blissful moment of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

Hands up if you’ve ever been a bachelor.

People, if you’ve been there you know the lazy-boned joy of sleeping in a bed half-covered in clothes, eating breakfast over the sink to avoid using one of your three plates, and getting dressed straight outta the dryer or laundry basket.

Yeah, you know how it goes: Alarm clock buzzes and you’re suddenly grog-sliding around your cramped apartment as a Bedhead Nude.  Next it’s time to pop open the dryer door or eyeball the assorted clump of clean clothes in a basket and start fishing through your wrinkly clothes for a wrinkly wardrobe.

Balled-up underwear, twisted T-shirts, and crumpled jeans that are still a bit wet fit you jusssssst fine and before you know it you’re looking hot to trot.

Now just make sure when you pull off this classic move you take a second to nod in the mirror and smile slowly while congratulating yourself on saving some valuable time. Ironing shirts, rolling up socks, folding underwear?

No thanks.

We’d rather fill our days with an extra five minutes of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

Flex those spaghetti arms, grit those teeth, and look absolutely adorable.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Ring the bell.

We’re supposed to run around.

We’re not supposed to be still. We’re not supposed to be quiet.

Pull out to our spinning planet swirling on its axis in the middle of our solar system. Pull out to us spinning around the sun flying through the ever-expanding blackness at breakneck speed. Everything outside is flying faster than we can move and faster than we can imagine…

And here we are, sitting at our desks, staring out our windows.

Pull into our chubby bodies full of pumping blood rushing through beating hearts. Pull into eyeball electrons swirling around eyeball atoms in front of flickering brain cells, swallowing stomachs, and flashing nerves. Everything inside is flying faster than we can move and faster than we can imagine…

Everything outside us in spinning and swirling, everything inside us in spinning and twirling, everything around us is flying and soaring…

We’re not supposed to be still. We’re not supposed to be quiet.

We’re supposed to run around.

Ring the bell.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, and here

Big buildings full of flickering lights, faded paint on rusty water towers, and mirrory windows of familiar stores welcome you all the way back home…

Smile and hit the gas as familiar feelings soak back into your brain. Smooth streets and bumpy sideroads, flashing orange lights and dented stop signs, and tipsy toddlers on teetering bikes riding past your front door…

Going away is overrated.

Coming home is

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

I have a fat wallet.

Stuffed to the gills with plastic cards and old receipts it sort of looks like a messy paper sandwich. I barely squeeze it into my jeans and when I sit down it sharply jabs my leg, cutting off all blood supply from my femoral artery.

Every couple of months I get frustrated with the extra baggage and my dead, black leg so I sit down to perform emergency surgery on the kitchen counter. I furrow my brows and snap on some rubber gloves before cracking open its rib cage and digging in with both hands. Tiny folded pockets and little plastic card holders are combed through and shredded receipt guts fly … before I eventually collapse from exhaustion.

The sad part comes next when I try and close the cage back up and realize… it didn’t work. My wallet is still fat. It’s stuffed. It’s packed and I can barely close the thing.

Peering down with sad eyes I’m forced to slowly come to terms the root of my problems: that thick wad of loyalty cards. Hot salty tears drip onto my coffee punchcards and movie theater popcorn passes as I realize I always fall victim to their seductive ways.

I am an extremely cheap person so I sign up for every loyalty card offered to me. Drug store points, gas pump cards, grocery store deals — yes, yes, yes, I say, smiling eagerly and nodding my head with my tongue out like a Cocker Spaniel before stuffing another laminated card into my paper sandwich.

So! Stuffed-purse-and-fat-wallet penny pinchers of the world, heed my call: baggage, back pain, and blocked arteries are no laughing matter so when we finally glance at the cashier with a satisfied smile and toss a card full of stamps on the counter to score a free bran muffin… well just tell me that isn’t all worth it… and just tell me that isn’t all

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, and here

And driving it right out.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here