It started to snow yesterday afternoon around 2:30 PM. So it’s a good thing I decided to play hooky from work yesterday. I can’t drive in the white stuff. Obviously, I’m not a big fan or either winter or snow. I’m definitely a spring and summer person.
But hey, snow is pretty. I took the first picture (above) around 7 PM last night, and the other two are from about 2 PM today. Hopefully it’s all gone by Monday. Some of it melted during the day.
It’s here again–the statistically proven most depressing month of the year–so it’s time to reblog this. Only 30 more days of hell,but then February is a short month, and then it’s March and here in the South, March is Spring!
The view from my window at around 7:30 AM:
8:45 AM:
It shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.
Today I was helping my roommate pack her things and cleaning the room to show to prospective new housemates.
Maybe I’m a terrible person, but I was feeling irked with her all day for seemingly no reason. I finally realized why. I don’t want her to leave! We’re never going to be BFFs, but she’s been a trustworthy and reliable housemate and I really don’t relish the idea of having to find a replacement who may not be as trustworthy and reliable. I also have to find one soon (so far the only possibility is a gay man around my age who can move in on the 9th). So I was easily irritated and not doing much to hide my annoyance and irritation while helping her clean and pack, and was losing my patience easily. I was less able than usual to be mindful and my BPD and covert narcissism symptoms were showing.
I also dislike change.
I know Stacey was just trying to make friendly conversation, because she probably saw I wasn’t saying much, and when I did talk, it was in abrupt, one or two word bursts. She probably thought I was mad at her (she always thinks everyone’s mad at her).
But through no fault of her own, she couldn’t have picked a worse thing to break the ice with. What she said pressed all my I-hate-winter buttons. Although most people would not have been triggered by what she said, I lost control and went off on her and even told her she was stupid and ignorant for believing the cliche. 😳
She said, “I hear it’s going to be a really bad winter this year.”
Because she’s moving to Florida, I almost took this as a kind of insult (“nyah nyah, I’m going where it’s warm and you’re gonna be freezing your buns off”). I know that’s not what she meant but I took it that way.I apologized later and told her the truth–that I was upset she was leaving and that I would miss her, and was stressed about having to find a replacement quickly.
It reminded me of this post I wrote about a year ago about why that icebreaker (no pun intended) “I hear it’s gonna be a cold one this year” triggers me so much.
Why I Can’t Stand Snow
“Sooooo….I hear it’s gonna be a rough winter this year.”
ARGGGHHHH!
I hear this every single year, starting in about August. It drives me insane. First of all, how does anyone know how rough the winter’s gonna be? Weather forecasters can’t even predict the weather right most of the time DAYS ahead, never mind for the long term. Flipping a coin would probably do just as good a job predicting the weather. Whenever people use this phrase, I want to slam my head through a brick wall. Why? Because it almost seems like a taunt to me, as if they WANT it it snow all winter. It’s also usually said by someone who has four wheel drive and fancy snow tires. They’re prepared.
Well guess what? I’m not.
Sure, snow is pretty and all, and it’s nice on CHRISTMAS because it suits the season and on Christmas, most of us…
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Graph I made showing my mood pattern throughout the year. It’s this way every year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my SAD.
SAD is triggered by the lack of light and shortening days for those affected with it. During the shorter days the brain produces more melatonin, a naturally occurring hormone that induces sleepiness in certain animals, like bears. It’s the reason why some mammals hibernate until the warmer, longer days of spring. Unfortunately, some humans retain this biological urge to hibernate, but because we must continue to live productive lives, our natural urge to sleep is ignored and seasonal depression is the result.
I seem to suffer from a weird form of SAD. The fall is much more depressing to me than winter. Most people with SAD feel terrible in late fall AND all winter. But for me, I start feeling depressed sometime in mid-August, when the days are growing noticeably shorter. Obviously, for me, the heat as nothing to do with it.
My SAD really kicks in once Fall officially starts and the trees start changing colors. My worst months are by far November and December. I absolutely hate them. I can’t stand the holidays (too stressful), so they do nothing to lighten or bring cheer to my low mood. All I want to do is curl into a little ball and hibernate until early spring.
In mid-late fall, everything looks so grim and barren to me–shades of gray, brown, and black, and everything is dying/going to sleep. The cold, gloomy, overcast days don’t help either. It’s dark when I get up and dark when I come home from work. It’s everything I can do to drag myself through these dark, depressing days.
Although I hate ice and cold and snow, sometime around the end of January (which I read is statistically the most depressing month of the year) my mood begins to perk up as my body begins to notice the lengthening days. Actually, I feel relief after the first day of winter, just knowing the days are going to get longer for 6 more months. I feel even more relief once the Holiday season is over (which I find really stressful).
My mood continues to improve until mid-late spring, then starts to level off, until early August when it starts to sink again.
My mood is at it’s highest around the end of April/early May. I have no idea why. Maybe because the days are fairly long by then, but the oppressive heat (which I don’t really like) hasn’t kicked in yet.
I think it might also have to do with the fact there are so many happy colors in the spring–and they aren’t the dreary 1970s-like browns, golds and oranges of fall. They’re more like 1980s colors–or even 1960s colors in some cases (and weren’t both those decades less depressing than the 1970s?) Everything isn’t all the same boring shade of green the way it is in summer either. I love spring.
My body/brain seems to mimic the cycle of hibernating animals–except that in the winter I actually feel better than in the fall. That I can’t really figure out because I hate cold weather so much (and it’s coldest here in February, but my mood is not that bad anymore by then).
I face this same strange pattern every single year. I’m coming into the worst of it in about another month or so. Blah.
For further reading: How to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder/Winter Blues:
http://www.normanrosenthal.com/blog/2012/01/how-to-beat-seasonal-affective-disorder-winter-blues-infographic/
Even though winter’s over and I don’t care for that season, I’m still in love with this photo. (Click to enlarge)
NEW YORK CITY STREET VIEW PART 1–Photo Credit: Unknown Photographer
Matthew Jackson Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.jackson.129357?fref=photo
By the end of this month, some places will look like this.
I cannot believe we’re already into the third month of 2015. Where did the winter go? It can’t go away too fast for me!
March is a special month. Once it arrives, I start to realize the season of darkness, ice, cold, flu, and high heating bills is finally in its death throes. Sure, March is still cold in most of the non-tropical northern hemisphere. There can still be snowstorms and some of the worst blizzards in history have happened in March. It’s not quite time to put away the winter coats and gloves and take off the snow tires yet.
But in March, the snow that falls tends to melt faster, the days are getting noticeably longer (don’t forget to set your clocks AHEAD next Sunday!), and by mid-month, at least in my part of the country, the weather gets a bit warmer too.
The first thunderstorms of the year arrive, and people living in Tornado Alley must be wary of severe weather again. I happen to love big storms and like to sit outside on my covered porch and watch them roll in.
On some days and nights, you may even be able to keep the heat turned off, which lowers your heating bill.
In many southern and mid-Atlantic states, some trees begin to show a hazy pale greenish tint by the end of the month. Other trees take on a diluted version of the same colors you see on them in the fall, before their chlorophyll kicks in. (Has anyone ever noticed this? I never did until a few years ago). The forsythias and first crocuses and other early-spring flowers begin to bloom. You may see a robin or two in your backyard. Although most trees are still bare, many are sporting fat buds on their branches.
March is the month the intrepid (some might say insane) hikers who decide to take on all 2,168 miles of the Appalachian trail begin their trek in Georgia (and won’t complete their journey until late August or September, when they arrive in Maine just as it starts to turn colder). Hiking the entire Appalachian Trail is actually on my Bucket List of things to do before I die. I’m crazy enough to do it if I can ever afford to take off the six months it requires to just drop out of modernity and normal life (which would not be a problem for me at all!)
Very early spring along the Appalachian Trail.
If you live in a rural area you start to notice fields being tilled in preparation for sowing the year’s crops.
Easter stuff is being sold everywhere. Hell, it’s been out there in the stores since February 15th! Garden centers start stocking up again.
By the end of this month, if it gets at all warm, I will probably need to uncover the lawnmower and push that creaky old rusted machine through the grass for the first time this year.
I love this time of year, because of the way it represents the promise of new life and another cycle of nature at its very beginning. The world is like a person stirring in light sleep just before waking up to start a new day.
In just three weeks, it will be officially Spring, even if we still need to keep our coats and sweaters handy for a few more weeks.
I think March is underrated. Everyone gets so excited about the coming of Fall, but as beautiful as that time of year is, I have always found it a bit depressing. Everything is dying and the days are getting colder and shorter. This time of year, while the weather is still not ideal and there’s no big holiday season to look forward to (outside of Easter), the mood of lengthening days and stronger and warmer sunlight nurtures my spirit.
If you love spring, you will love this book I read several years ago called “Chasing Spring: An American Journey through a Changing Season,” which describes a road trip that follows the progress of the season starting in the deep South as early as late February and progressing northward until the middle of June, when spring weather finally arrives in northern Canada.
When I opened my front door this morning, I saw this lovely scene.
I’ve had it. This hasn’t been such a bad winter overall, until this month. If we’re going to get snow and sub-zero temperatures here in western North Carolina, it’s most likely going to be in February and March.
Nature, you’re so predictable.
This month has been hell for me climatically. Last week the temperatures dropped down into the single digits and my pipes froze, even though I kept them dripping at a fast clip to keep them from freezing. The only water I still had was a little trickle of ICE COLD water from the kitchen sink. Things stayed like this for an entire week.
Two days ago, the temperatures rose to the low 50’s and I waited impatiently for the water to return. Instead, when I went into the kitchen yesterday morning, I noticed the laminate parquet-look floor I just put in a year ago was soaking wet and squishy under my feet. Further investigation revealed its source–a pipe had burst behind the wall of the kitchen and water was seeping through the floor. I listened and heard what sounded like someone taking a shower inside the wall.
My landlord told me to turn off the water (which requires going outside and lifting the manhole cover by the road) and he’d send someone out to look. His handyman, a drunk named Roger who never really fixes anything because he’s cheap (my landlord doesn’t want to spend any money), is famous for just jimmy rigging things instead of fixing or replacing them. He might as well just carry Duct tape around to use for everything. Last year when this happened, he “fixed” the pipes even though they are probably the original ones that came with the house when it was built in 1908. Because the pipes are uninsulated and UNDER the house, he had to rip out part of the kitchen floor and an entire wall to get to the pipes. Of course he never insulated them, just patched them up somehow (probably using Duct tape). He replaced the original kitchen wall with an ugly piece of ill-fitting plywood. I painted it to make it at least a little presentable. I put the new kitchen floor in because of the damage done to the old one (and the old one was really ugly anyway–dark brown 1970s speckled linoleum).
So of course the pipes burst again and now there’s no water at all because I had to turn it off to keep the leak from doing further damage. I haven’t had a proper shower in a week. The dishes are piled in the sink and starting to stink. I may go to the truck stop today to take a shower if I can drive there later because the feeling of dirty grunginess is very depressing and I probably smell. I can’t get to my job today (again!) because of the snow on the roads and it’s still snowing. I think I might go out and fill a bunch of milk jugs (which I keep handy for such emergencies) with snow, let them melt by the heat, heat the water on the stove, and fill the tub so I can take a bath. It will probably take hours to do this and about 100 milk jugs worth of snow, but I really need a fucking bath! My hair is hanging in greasy strings and my scalp is starting to itch. How did people before the days of indoor plumbing stand all the dirtiness?
I am also losing money. Last week I only worked two days: one day the office closed due to the icy road conditions and the other two days (when my car was having its transmission rebuilt) there wasn’t enough work to justify having anyone pick me up. My roommate’s car won’t start either and there was no one else to drive me back and forth to work. Thank the Lord, my car’s fixed now (and runs better than it has in two years) but I still have no f*cking water.
Now the temperatures are dropping again, into the teens, and the handyman, who apparently finally realized the house needed replumbing and was going to come out today to start working on that, just called to say he wouldn’t be able to do it with the temperatures this low. It’s supposed to remain this cold all week.
This really bites. I hate winter with all my body, mind, and soul. Maybe I need to just move to Florida or something where I will never have to deal with freezing pipes, cars too cold to start, icy and snowy mountain roads, and just plain being cold all the time.
Why anyone in their right mind could love winter (except for wealthy people who don’t have to drive to a job and get to ski and snowboard all winter) is beyond my comprehension.
Spring, hurry up and get here! PLEASE.
Lucky Otters Haven 