gray

Ugh. I think I'm starting to feel the winter blah thing.

Normally, I like chilly rainy weather. But this is getting kind of ridiculous.

We have had exactly 3 nice days in the past 3 weeks. They have all been Wednesdays. Wednesday is my longest work-day, and it is also the day I have volunteer work AFTER work. Meaning, I am indoors doing someone else's bidding for approximately 13 hours on Wednesdays.

Do you know how much it feels like a middle finger from Ma Nature to have the mid-week be lovely, warm, and bright, and then Friday morning, seeing the clouds clamp down, the temperature drop to 40, and the rain begin? Every weekend since I've been back in town after my Christmas break has really sucked rocks. I've had plans for most of them and wound up cancelling the plans (generally) because the weather was either too miserable or was downright hazardous to drive in.

Also, where I live, we've been in a drought for well over a year. I was looking at some old pictures I took a couple years ago of my garden and I could not believe that it was ever that green out.

I guess I just hit a wall mid-February. I begin to feel kind of trapped, I get sort of cranky. I get even worse if we're in a drought and there's NO chance of anything greening up much for the approximately two weeks we get spring.

I'm also put out at the recent decision to extend Daylight Saving Time. Did you know, this year it starts in March and ends in November? I'm sorry, but as an early riser that just doesn't work. It's depressing as hell to me to go out and HAVE TO PUT MY FRONT PORCH LIGHT ON AS I AM GOING TO WORK SO THAT I DON'T BREAK MY NECK FALLING DOWN MY PORCH STAIRS IN THE DARK. I don't know, that just feels wrong.

I go to work at 7 am. It is just barely, barely becoming light at that hour. And with the low gray clouds we've had, it's usually not even barely light at that hour lately. (I would add that most days, as I drive past My Local Sonic, they are just putting their lights on. I go to work before the Sonic opens. That just seems kind of sad to me on days when I'm already sad.)

There are days when I am indoors from 7 am until very nearly 7 pm. I do not get to see the sun if it is out. The whole "recreation time in the evenings" issue doesn't even apply to me - I'm lucky during the week if I get an hour of "recreation time" in the evening, and that's usually from 8 to 9 pm, when it's dark all the time except for the veriest height of summer (and at that - who wants to be out at that hour? The mosquitoes are crazy, even when it's still light here).

Again, it feels like a middle finger to me. But this time from the Feds to us early risers. I get up at 5 am and I will tell you, that feels like the deadest darkest part of the day when it's early on in Daylight Saving. It's a painful transition - it would have been just barely be beginning to gray up as I got up in mid-March, and then, BAM, Daylight Saving, and it's back to feeling like I get up at 2 am. Miserable. Depressing. And very hard not to take personally.

It is very hard for me not to take personally anything that makes my life more complex and difficult at 5 am when I am getting up to do my hour's exercise. I do an hour's exercise because if I didn't, I would be able to eat approximately 4 calories in a day without gaining weight. And that's like a Tic Tac and a glass of water.

So I haul my sorry fat ass out of bed at 5 am as many days a week as I can force myself to (usually five). And I work out. And it just makes it worse knowing it won't be light for three more hours at that time.

And I fail to see how all these vaunted "energy savings" are going to materialize. I'm not going to bump around in the dark at 5 am when I get up. True, I MAY not have to put my lamps on as early in the evening but from where I sit, it looks like a wash, in terms of energy savings.

And then there's driving to work in the dark. I know lots of people do it, but I think most of them would agree with me that it FEELS WRONG. No one should have to drive to work in the dark unless they are voluntarily working a night shift. And I'm sure there will be more accidents - dawn and dusk are the worst times for accidents, and then you factor in people who are sleep deprived, cranky, and sad, because they're getting up at what feels like the dead zone of the night.

So I don't know. It's gray, gray, gray here (except when it's too dark for it to be gray) and I feel like I'm never seeing the sun. I know I'll be complaining come August when it's 105* and there's no shade and it's not rained in a month, but...I'd just like a happy medium for once.

And I don't know. I'm just "not feelin' it," as that moon-guy on the Jimmy Dean's ad says. I haven't really "felt it" for a little while - oh, I keep up appearances, I have my happy moments, but when I'm alone and it gets quiet, I get a little sad and restless. I need to get out. I need to see living green. I need to stop feeling like my life is circumscribed by the little radius of work/church/grocery store.

But I also don't have the energy to go out and do something. I wake up on the weekend and I think, "It's going to be 45* and it's raining; there's no point in going anywhere because it's cold and miserable." So I'm in a little rut right now, and skeins of floss notwithstanding, it's just not a joyous time of the year for me.

It's also a little while until my birthday - of a year which shall not be named. I really honestly can't believe how I got to be so OLD. My hair is going gray. I have little lines around my eyes. (And yet, I still get acne, once a month: yet another middle finger from Ma Nature, I guess). I've reached an age where I realize it's unlikely bordering on impossible I will ever marry, and it's impossible I will have a child (a biological one at least). Not that I particularly WANT children, but there's still something I think to be mourned over the departure of that possibility (66 or whatever the hell they are women at fertility clinics notwithstanding; I think having a kid over 35 or so is pretty risky both for mom and baby).

And I ask myself: Will I still be doing this, when I am 60? Will I still be packing my sorry little yogurt and apple and crackers in my lunchkit every morning, and trundling off to work (in the dark), and coming home to my empty house, watching cartoons, and generally living as I do now - not a real grownup, I think?

Is that going to look too pathetic at 60? Does it look too pathetic now?

I don't know. I just...the whole grown-up thing frustrates me. I thought when you hit 18 or so, you got some kind of "received knowledge" or you were issued a handbook or something that explained it all, that said what you were supposed to do and how you were supposed to act. I don't get this making it up as you go along, I feel like I'm doing everything the wrong way some days, I feel like I'm acting "too young" for my actual age and for my supposed gravitas as a college professor.

And the gray hairs don't help. Nor does the gray weather. Nor does the prospect in a few more weeks of losing, totally losing an hour of my life to an arbitrary change of the clocks.

If I had had more time and energy earlier in the fall, I would have forced a few narcissi or something...just to have a little bit of green and a little bit of a flower for now.