JAN FEB MARCH the three furies.

 

What my winter looks like... February 2009 in the homeland.

California is in my blood I think.  It seems to me there must be a little melted L-shape piece of DNA somewhere inside that big web of biology-class-polka-dots that makes up me. I call it the "California gene." This gene allows me to drive fast and fearless past the lagging masses on the roadway.  It has also blessed me with an inherent sense of direction in the magical kingdom that is Disneyland. 

The gene has many perks in fact; a prickly sensitivity and disdain for public smoking and littering, a refined appreciation for mexican cuisine, a downright snobby love of quality produce (in our UT grocery store I swear the avocados look like limes and the limes look like green grapes!), a passion for the writings of John Steinbeck, and a loud patriotic home-state bias (forgive me por favor).

There is one downfall to this genetic mutation of sorts... There are three months of the year

that

slay

 

me

My body was never trained for them, never conditioned for their merciless wrath. Spring comes in one single blink after the new year in the Golden State. Winter there means rain, and green hills, and growing mossy things. It means eating in the halls instead of outside but it never means hand cracking and wind burn or colorless days.  I. am. not. built. for. this. (and it hasn't even gotten bad yet!)

Those three devilish months are the grey months. January (the "Oh yea this is what cold is like" month), February (The "are we there yet?" month), and March (You generally get to march looking like a refugee who's been hiding in a box somewhere unfriendly).  I met these three months in Pennsylvania... they have followed me to Utah. They are a mean trio, the three furies of my destruction. I leave them tired, pasty, glazed over, and spring crazy.

Here are a couple tricks that I will be using to battle my unruly companion... winter.

a good book: I have a few stacks to dig into. It's my own tame form of escapism.

cooking bright things: nothing is more sad than a grey day ended with a grey meal. 

the gym: The only place I sweat in snow-exile.

music: I'm thinking some beach boys and denial may be good this time of year.

an unhealthy obsession with, and focus on, valentines day: the last holiday.

I am also considering sun lamp, heat lamp, ocean noise download, indoor beach day, a plant to take care of that I also can't kill, a fake plant, indoor flip flop wear-age because my feet miss them so, and a summer movie marathon. 

I leave you with an early cherry blossom bloom and premature spring thoughts.