Better Late Than Never

Spring officially sprang yesterday (actually during the night on Wednesday). What an anticlimax. Spring has been sprung here in Northern California since February 8th. That was the date the smell of the wind changed to balmy, the plants leapt into bud and bloom, and the birds started singing. Ross and I went on a walk at the Nature Center the previous Sunday, and it was quiet as winter. Except for a couple of scrub jay squawks and some crows cawing, the air was silent.

We did a Volkswalk on Sunday, and the air was bursting with birds falling into lust. I didn't realize how silent winter actually was until the birds brought spring in with all their throbbing glory.

By now all the exotic (non-native) fruit trees have bloomed and leafed out in their tender spring leaves. The redbud is fading away, the electric pink starting to look tatty. California poppies are in their apogee and the lupines are coming on quickly. Wild mustard and radish have been throbbing away for weeks, and vetch is beginng to show its dusky purple blooms.

Before those of you who live in colder climates begin to pine with jealousy, all this is a definite problem:

The Early Bird Gets Confused
Spring springs early and biologists worry

You probably went to bed Wednesday night in one season and woke up in another, as spring officially began at 1:48 a.m. EDT yesterday. But in fact trees are blossoming and birds are singing earlier than ever, say biologists -- and that's not ideal. Among the consequences of a climate-change-caused early spring: a longer allergy season, longer wildfire season, and disoriented flora and fauna.

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I can personally attest to the allergy part -- I've been knocked right off my pins by this year's bout. Allergy-induced asthma is so deceptive! During the winter I can hike and do all sorts of things -- I exercise, I start to lose a bit of weight. Then spring hits, like a rock, and suddenly I can't walk from the car into the house without panting for breath, when the week before I was doing 8K hikes. Most disspiriting!

The worst of the allergies seem to be over, so next week I'm going to try to get back out there with the Volkswalkers. If I can get enough of a head start over the weekend on my taxes, that is!

High Summer

It's now a month since the day job ended, and I find myself busier than ever. I thought I'd be lolling about on the patio during lazy summer afternoons, and posting here on a regular basis. Instead I'm still cleaning the patio after all these months of neglect -- no lolling about for me!

It's the height of summer here, and it's been a mild one so far. One episode of triple digits but more days of mid to high 80s, which are just lovely. And a good thing too, since all the freon has leaked out of the A/C in the van, leaving me at the mercy of what breezes may blow.

The chicory is blooming and the buckeyes are turning brown and wilted. Grasses are dry and tinderish. If you've seen the news at all lately, you'll know that California is beset by fires: small wild fires up to now, and fortunately quickly put out. Except for the Angora Fire, of course, which ate its way through acres and 250 houses up at Lake Tahoe. We had little rainfall this last winter and the snowpack in the Sierras was very low (55% of average in the north to 40% in the south), so 2007 is shaping up to be the year defined by fire.

Summer Is Upon Us

The grasses are turning brown and dusty. There's still a few lupines and California poppies but they're tired and unhappy. Vetch and chicory are into their glory, as are the buckeye trees -- awash with glorious stalks of creamy flowers.

The heat is creeping up slowly. 80s this week, 90s next week. Can summer be far behind?

Hah! Haven't lost my touch!

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Tonight I have a minute or two to spare, for the first time in a long time. I miss blogging, and have so much catching up to do. Looking at my last entry, it seemed appropriate to post tonight, when we've lurched into daylight savings time 3 weeks early. It's still officially winter -- spring won't start by the calendar until the 21st. It was lovely to sit out on the patio tonight until almost 7:00, enjoying the balmy sweet spring air. Charlie loved it too -- she was content indoors most of the winter, but demanded to spend the day outside today. Balmy indeed: temps in the high 70s here, and they broke heat records up in Redding, and down in Los Angeles -- scary the fires raging out of control there tonight!! Fires that we see at the end of summer, not in March. I worry what the summer will bring California, if they're at this stage before spring is officially here. And no, of course there's no such thing as global warming ...


Via Maya's Granny

*
*Look at the list of books below.
*Bold the ones you’ve read.
*Italicize the ones you want to read.
*leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
*If you are reading this, tag you're it.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

55 out of the 100. Not nearly as widely read as I could be (should be?). I'm still a voracious reader -- currently I'm on 2 on line reading lists, & belong to although last year I didn't meet my goal.

By Way of Explanation

I haven't been here much lately, since I started back at a full time job. It's been a disaster. Or perhaps better characterized as a very expensive lesson.

I have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). This isn't a news flash for me, I've known I had it for the past 20 years or so. I thought I only had a mild case of it. I'm finding out differently.

Last winter, when I wasn't working, I wasn't bothered with it at all. I have full spectrum light bulbs in most of the lights in my house, and thought that did the trick. You know how if something isn't bothering you at the moment, you don't even think about it?

I started the new job August 21. It's one of those cube farm places and of course my cube isn't even close to a window. At first I was just depressed during the week, and came back alive on the weekends. That's slowly gone away until now I'm down all the time.

I've discovered that it's not the amount of sunlight, it's how often I'm exposed to sunlight. I figured that one out because I had a Scottish Games to vend at over the weekend of October 14/15. I had to take the Friday off because I have to get where I'm going and get the booth set up, to be ready when the gates open Saturday morning. It was a great games -- I cleared almost $1,000.

I saw my therapist on the Monday after. "How are you?" she asked. "Fine!" I enthused, because I was. It had been a great weekend -- I love vending! I love meeting the people, seeing the other vendors, hearing the bagpipes (yes I know, but I'm nuts about bagpipes). It was a 6 hour trip each way, so I got some driving time in too -- perfect!, since I love driving. "Fine!" I said, and then I said "but I'll probably be down by the end of the week", and I was.

I thought it was just myself, being the rebel, not wanting to have to be an adult and work for a living. But then I realized that it's because I'm not getting enough light. I've done all the obvious things: the boss put full spectrum lights in the ceiling above my desk, and I've brought in a lamp with a full spectrum bulb for my desk. I've started walking at lunch time (also good for the diabetes). I'm taking St. John's Wort, which helps a bit but not enough.

But I'm still sunk in the pits of gloom: here it is the weekend and I don't much care (sure sign of depression!). I went to bed at 9:30 last night (and I'm a terrible night owl!), read for about 15 minutes and went to sleep. Not only that, but I think my grandson is going to come over this afternoon and I don't much care about that either. (And if you've been my reader for any time at all, you'll know right away there's something wrong! When I'm not depressed, I'd move heaven and earth for those grandkids of mine!) I've done naught with my eBay business, which is a real problem as I've got stock enough to sell full-time for 3 months or more. I have dreams of adding to the vending business by starting my own line of shortbread, but I've done nothing to implement that, and the dream itself is becoming fuzzy and fading into obscurity.

My life has narrowed down to going to work, coming home, watching a video. I don't read much (& I'm a voracious reader. I have a goal of reading 100 books a year, & at this rate I won't even hit 50). I'm "too tired" to socialize much any more. I've cut back tremendously on the e-mail I get and don't have the ambition to answer what I do get. I don't shop & prepare lunches & dinners, so I'm back to buying whatever I can grab -- not a healthy situation either.

And I'm remembering that when I worked full time before, the depression was there all the time, winter or summer. Not that pinning my hopes on summer sunlight is a solution, with tonight being the night to turn the clocks back.

So I've concluded that it's how often I get out in the sunlight, not the total amount of sunlight I get. When I'm not working, I'm in a natural light environment 24/7 anyway, plus being able to get up and walk outside whenever I want to. My body knows how to take care of itself -- I do that several times an hour ... when I'm not chained to a desk in a cube farm.

I can't keep on like this. Neither can I quit the job right now. If nothing else, I need to keep it until I can finish the Redecision Therapy (which is going to help the dysthymia, the other depression I struggle with. And isn't it fun to have your very own ICD code!). I also need to have a good prudent reserve socked away. I think I'd better start some better living through chemistry, don't you?

Happy Anniversary!

Last Friday was a milestone in our little family.

10 years ago last Friday, my son and his beloved stood up in front of a select crowd, on the lawn of a lovely Victorian B&B in old town Napa, in 107° heat, and took each other for better or for worse. Please don't ask me for my opinion on which it's turned out to be.

And, on that very same day, but not because of the goings-on on that day, I stopped smoking.

And haven't started again.