January 2013

So I’m sitting in the parking lot near Dunkin’ Donuts during my lunch hour. I’m looking across the lot at the various cars parked in a reasonable order and I can’t help but notice that the color selection of the majority vehicles is, for lack of a better word, muted. There are no oranges or lime greens or yellows like you’d find in the days gone by. Everything is a subtle color, if the color falls outside of a monochromatic selection at all.

I wonder why this is.

People often buy the vehicle that expresses their personality. This isn’t always the case, but people will most likely buy the color vehicle that they are attracted to, and judging by this completely unscientific survey I’m doing here, people are feeling rather subtle these days. They don’t want to stray far from a gray area. There are very few who make the bold choice.

I find this intriguing.

I just popped a Vitamin D capsule from my husband’s stash. For some reason I have not been taking Vitamin D this winter. This is something that I usually do because it does help with the winter blahs I feel from time to time. I like to think of Vitamin D as a little capsule of sunshine. It helps boost my spirits a bit. Or, at least I think that it’s helping me boost my spirits a bit.

Even though I don’t like being out in the sun, I still really enjoy sunshine. Lots and lots of sunshine. I like to sit in the shade and look out over a sunlit landscape and just feel the warm breezes on my face. That doesn’t happen a lot in January in Central New York. We get a steady diet of gray skies and snow covered landscapes. While it can be quite pretty, it’s kind of monochromatic and that contributes to a ‘blah’ feeling.

I have a couple of natural LED lightbulbs in my office that are suppose to help me feel all cheery by simulating sunlight. I definitely prefer the LED lightbulbs over fluorescent lights, and the light is kind of cheery, but it’s not warm and cheery. This zaps my energy levels a little bit. Perhaps the warmth and the energy levels will come in the Vitamin D tablet I just pilfered from my husband’s stash of vitamins.

Now I remember why we sneak off to Virginia Beach around the last week of February. We might have to do that again this year.

In the meantime I’ll look at the LED lamp and hope there’s warmth in the Vitamin D.

I must be doing something wrong. There must be something that I’m missing in this grand scheme called life. I look around. I see people in real life having dinner with friends, enjoying drinks, spending hours at the gym. They laugh, they have fun. And they have all the time in the world to do so.

I read blog posts. I see tweets. Same deal. People out having fun, having a grand time with all the time in the world. They seem relaxed. At ease. Ready to par-tay. Woo woo!

I must have signed up for a shortened timeline or something. I feel like my life is frenetic. Packed to the seams with events and activities. And we’re not even that sociable. Sleep, eat, work, eat, gym, repeat. It doesn’t feel treadmill-like, it just feels like I don’t have enough time.

I’m organized. That’s all working and has made things better, but after dinner, working out at the gym and then trying to fold a load of laundry, it’s time for bed. Time to rinse and repeat.

Maybe this is part of some two-decade long mid-life crisis. There’s so many things, both big and little that I still want to do. So many little projects that I want to escape into. So many people I want to meet, so many places I want to see. But who has the time? Something is consuming all of my time.

And I don’t have the time to figure out what it is.

So yesterday it was bitter cold, which made taking a morning and afternoon walk at work less than as enjoyable as it could have been. It’s important to get exercise, plus walking at work has the amazing benefit of clearing my head and making me more productive when I return to my desk, so one must do what they must do, even if Mother Nature doesn’t want us to do it. Still, it was quite cold.

This morning when I got up for work I noticed that it was 9F. It was another chilly morning in these parts, just like it’s suppose to be in January. It’s what’s expected. Except now it’s over 40. And now only is it over 40, it’s over 45. The weather folks are saying that it could hit 50 by the weekend but I rarely believe what they say so only time will tell.

I feel like we are on some sort of weather roller-coaster this winter. I’m not complaining about it, mind you, as this appears to be the new norm, where the winters are more mild than they were when I was a kid. Earl tells me that it’s all cyclic and it probably is, we are just in a part of the cycle that I’m not familiar with.

But I have to admit that I do miss having that “really big storm” of the season where we get dumped on with several feet of snow within a 24 hour period. Sure, it’s inconvenient and I’d probably complain about it myself as it’s happening, but it’s a good way to get the adrenaline pumping and nature knows I love the pumping of adrenaline. Maybe after our spring in January we’ll get something wacky like a sno-nado or something.

Good times.