"It is a bad bad weather day" (says Grace)

After lots of warm fall days, I'm afraid winter has finally set in. The snowstorm over Thanksgiving was cold but quick and it has been warm ever since. Today, it snowed again and I think it's going to be cold for many many weeks. (this is a view from my living room window looking across the Assabet river)

Yesterday I was just saying how I think my favorite season in New England is winter. (I'm not so sure about that today...) In my adult life, winter has been my least favorite season. Somewhere between high school and college (after I quit skiing and thinking that riding horses in any temperature was fun) I started really feeling the cold. I have terrible joints and as everyone says "no meat on my bones" and I get very cold in even the slightest chill. I also get winter-time depression. In Salt Lake, both of those things added up to hating winter because of the temperatures and the long gray inversions. Here, though, I'm at least finding a bright spot to winter.

I do still get cold and hate being cold and today - I AM VERY COLD!!! But, with all the trees in New England and the humidity and the bugs, summer is very claustrophobic for me and I dreaded going outside almost more than I do now. The sun never shone in my house through spring, summer, or fall because of the trees (sometimes, I was even turning on lights in the middle of the day during the summer), but now that the leaves are gone and the sun is low in the southern sky, I have sunny south-facing windows! I have enjoyed them every day. The sun comes across the river right into my living room and den and I remember now when we were looking at the house to buy last February, that I decided I could stand to be cooped up in the house in the winter with babies if I could sit in one of those sunny windows. Also, with winter, the bugs are gone as is the humidity.

So, winter is not all bad. I just wear so many layers that it is a chore to get dressed and undressed and do all my laundry. Also, with my new automatic garage door opener that David and his Dad installed for me, I don't have to scrape (nor do I have to go anywhere in the morning!) It doesn't compare to the days when I left my house at 6am in the dark and had to scrape my truck and warm it up before trudging off to work.

I do love Christmas and I love snow at Christmas time, so I guess I will endure the cold for the time being. I think I will want spring somewhere at the end of January though. Spring came very late last year here. In fact, we really didn't get spring. It went straight from winter to summer in the middle of May. Next year (as in 2007), David promises that he will take me somewhere tropical for a vacation in February to make the winter shorter. Hopefully, after the snowstorm passes, the sun will come out and I can sit in my window...