Winter Blahs

It seems that winter is dragging this year. Perhaps that's my own perception because it seemed that winter took forever to get here in the first place... and maybe it's not really here yet.

Winter has always been characterized as being synonymous with Christmas and festivities of all sorts and, therefore, a happy time of year. Snowy days, sledding and snowman building, drinking cocoa by a roaring fire have a "Christmas card" kind of coziness that bare trees, bare ground, and 30 mile an hour winds, coupled with 30 degree temperatures, seem to lack.

Having been born and raised in El Paso, Texas, I'm pretty much a desert rat. I like warm, sunny days (in El Paso, that's about 90 degrees) and cold weather puts me in a grump. You can complain about blazing hot midday sunshine, but nothing compares to the warm evenings on the back deck (or porch) with a cold glass of iced tea or your beverage of choice. In the winter time, evenings just get colder and darker and the deck or porch is less hospitable! Coming home from work in the afternoon during summer means a few good hours of sunshine left to enjoy. Coming home from work in the afternoon during winter means having to turn on the lights when you walk into the house and feeling like bedtime is just around the corner and dinner isn't even cooked yet.

It's not even the end of January and I'm already anxious for the start of summer. Not spring; spring in this part of the country means wind gusts of up to 50 miles an hour with blowing dust. Summer, with its early sunrises, longer days, evenings around a campfire, flipflops, and green grass and trees.

Right now that mountain in the background is covered with snow

Now I'm going to go put another log on the fire....