It seems I always get just a bit antagonistic this time of year. I start ranting at the arrival of cold weather, short days, and the need to scrape frost/ice/snow off my car in the mornings before I can go anywhere. And on top of that, it also means, I have to start bundling up so I won't freeze once outside my cozy house.

I had begun checking the view of my windshield every morning, just in case I needed to get out and kick start the car to avoid the above mentioned scraping. There was no creeping up on the first frost this year. Usually you have a day when you walk out the door and find your breath hanging in a little puffy cloud right in front of your nose. That didn't happen this year, I peeked out the window and there sat my car, covered in a thin candy shell of ice.

As the cold air sets in chilling my bones, so also sets in the night. Here we luxuriate all summer in long idle days and evenings that stretch until 10pm. Now the days are quickly shortening up. It is dark a little after 7 and no longer am I blinded by the rising sun on my way to work... it is just getting to the graying up a bit phase. Of course, when daylight savings time ends we get a small reprieve but it only seems like about a week and it is dark in the evenings. We have a time during the middle of winter when I go to work in the gray of dawn at 8am and come home in the dark at 5. Wait! just a minute.... i don't work until 5 this year. I don't care. I'm going to rant anyway.

My sister has begun planning their departure for Florida with great encouragment for us to join them where it's warm all winter. But if I went, what would I complain about, balmy air, soft breezes, oceansurf, rain showers instead of blizzards... I don't know if I can adjust to complaining about those things. Maybe I should just stay here.

Besides, with all my bitching, there is that wonderful day when you peek out the window and the world has turned into a crystaline wonderland of snowy beauty. I hate snow... but I love it. I love ice crystals dangling from my eaves, I love curling up under quilts with a good book, snuggling down to watch a familiar movie with my cocoa steaming between my hands. Where else but here. I guess I need to just suck it up, admit I'd hate to live anywhere there is no change of seasons; the wonder of fall, the dread cold of winter, the hope of spring and the radiance of summer. Yeah, here is a good place to just be.