It’s just about winter and the days are short and begin to be swallowed up by night at around 3:30. The sun has been so absent that it’s included in the folk songs of the valley people. When I get the bus in the morning to work, I try to figure out who I’m with. Are they the winter people or the summer people?
People are often sectioned into two categories: winter and summer. I think the membership-values are quite clear. Summer people like baking in the sun and sweating and 20-hour-long days. Winter people wish we could all hark back to a time when we lived in caves and hid from the megafauna that was running around the earth at that time using us as toothpicks.
I am a mall person. I want 70ish–75ish degrees, shade, and a Sbarro’s nearby just in case I want a slice of pizza the size of a bookcase. I have no will to deal with weather and seasonal discomfort. However, I do obey the unwritten rule that you can complain about one season and one season only. It’s not fair if you gripe about hot and cold weather. Choose one to bitch about and in the other season, suffer in private.
Long ago I chose summer. The heat and I do not do well together. My body just loooves to sweat. And when I sweat in public, I look like I’ve just done something terrible criminal behavior for which I now await capture. It’s not a great look. Nope. Summer. I have never looked back.
But winter comes with its own challenges, among whose numbers none are the cold. This is my favorite thing about winter – bring on the cold days and the chilly nights. The dark is another story. And that story is unrelenting. Dark when we get up, dark when we leave for work, dark when we get home from work. In between? Yep. You guessed it: dark. Or at least gray.
There are lots of coping tips. To keep yourself positive, you should 1. Get sunlight, 2. eat lots of forest fruits and proteins, 3. down vitamins B, C, D and some other letters I can’t remember (because I don’t take enough vitamin B for memory help). 4. Don’t drink. 5. See people. 6. Reframe winter glumness (I guess like a seasonal it’s you, no me). 7. Read something light and absorbing. 8. Lower expectations (i.e. don’t take on too much work). 1. Write down a daily affirmation.
Right.
1. There is no sun. There is no light. There is only the gray and it will never end.
2. I do eat these things. I wish I could eat pizza too.
3. I think the vitamins are fighting for supremacy of my system. Based on my current symptoms (I am pink and now fear sunlight) I think D is winning.
4. Won’t dignify with response.
5. But I don’t like people in the sunny times.
6. This didn’t help. Just made me feel like winter had broken up with me and is now punishing me for withholding the jewelry.
7. This I will do. I read a lot of horror (maybe too much). I dreamed last night that all of the people in India disappeared. OK, definitely read too much horror.
8. Tis the most wonder—nah, tis the busiest time of the year. Work on work on work. So, whatever horror fiction doesn’t do to my psyche, the extra workload does. Maybe everyone in India was at their side gigs. Huh.
9. Today’s daily affirmation: this day will end.
Probably not what they had in mind.
Yesterday, the dog and I were hanging on the couch. I was working, she was trying to pick a fight with me using a pair of my favorite socks. The fun ended when someone outside set off fireworks. Because what gray 2 pm on a Monday isn’t replete with fireworks that will disappear into the clouds 4 inches away from you?
When this happens, she gets upset and goes into the bathroom. It’s dark and quiet in there. She barks for us to come to her and then gets wary when we’re there. Burke decided to build her a small fort out of some blankets, pillows, and her favorite chair.
Amazingly, this worked. We put her in there and she quieted. She also seemed to be happy about the fact that her view from the fort included us and she was probably also the cookies I was feeding her.
Then it dawned on me.
A fort!
Well, I finished my work and then I went into my room. We have a few extra pillows and blankets and pretty soon, I had myself a neat little fort. I got in there with my reading light and my book. My breath is about the only sound I could hear. The pets visited quickly and wanted access. I hadn’t had time to post a No Girls Allowed sign, so contractually I had to let them in.
I have no plans to leave. Well, not until the Indian population comes back from wherever they’re hiding out.
Now I just have to figure out how to get Burke to hand me cookies.
