okay, well not really. It's actually only about an inch and a half, but it's enough to talk me out of going downtown to the studio to take photos of my new vintage goodies(too dark and dreary anyhow) and just stay home. I was going to sneak in some chapbook folding, but that can wait until Monday I suppose if I just go in earlier. I will reiterate once again how much I hate winter and it gets a little harder to bear every year. (Last night, I walked outside and swear it was so cold it made my eyes a little blurry, and that was before I stood at the bus stop for a half hour. Bites.) It might just be pre-Christmas stress and craziness. It might be just a general sense of anxiety and malaise in just about everyone I know around me that's starting to creep into me. I am trying to concentrate on the very good things going on in my life and not sweat the details. But winter makes it harder to do this. I find myself continually telling myself under my breath that everything is going to be fine, that things will work out, that this all isn't some awful downward spiral into bad badness.
I always feel more vulnerable in the winter, since bad things things tend to happen then more than any other time--car accidents, sickness, crises. I used to be convinced that my neighboorhood would unearth at least one good tragedy shortly after Christmas. Once, our neighbors garage burned down. Once, a prostitutes body was found in a hedge of trees. When I was in college, another neighbor nearly fatally burned himself to a crisp while working on his car. Even my own mental health takes a turn for the worst in winter. In grad school, there was an entire January I spent, besides going to my classes at DePaul, sitting in the dark in my apartment and crying (or at least it seemed like it..) Another December about 5 years ago where I was convinced my upstairs neighbor had killed his girlfriend and that her body was lying up there decomposing (I heard somoene breaking down a door, two men's voices arguing, a woman screaming from otherwise quiet neighbors). Obviously not true and rather ridiculous in retrospect, but in my head, it constantly bothered me, even though I heard her clicky heels walking around above me after that, I was still convinced she'd been bludgeoned..it did not help that I had just seem Mulholland Drive. That was also the winter of the leaky radiators the landlord would not fix, which was resulting in a few Dark Water like moments of despair while they managed to ruin my beloved hardwood floors. Tragic, no, but overwhelming to me, yes..that constant dripping was enough to drive me insane. And of course, let us not forget the great Starbucks crying melt down a couple of years ago right before Christmas..
Everything is just HARDER these bleak months. Maybe it's some weird cabin fever restlessness..argh..just wish I could be free of it...
