The Crud Cloud

I'm doing that frustrating thing right now where I sit at the computer, feeling a need to write, to settle my brain, to purge some of my weird thoughts.  And whatever I start writing sounds so incredibly lame that I just delete it, not wanting to bore people to death.

But that's my reality.  Life seems boring to me right now.  My slump is here, like a monkey on my back, and I can't shake him.  I'm throwing myself a pity party for no good reason.  At all.  Life is pretty good right now.  I'm still struggling with feelings about the loss of my dad and worries about my mom, but I think I'm dealing with that.  I don't know what my slump is all about.  It might be the weather.

I know that sounds silly, but seriously!  We're having this bizzaro freakish "winter" with too much warmth and no snow.  The warmth thing is sort of all right, I guess.  It will make for a winter that feels short.  But when I'm outside, it's a bummer.  It's too cool to feel super comfortable, and not nearly cold enough to really be a winter.  And everything's dead and ugly.  The grass is dry and brown.  The trees are naked.  There are no signs of life.  There's not enough need for the birds to come to our feeders, so we are even not seeing the birds we usually enjoy this time of year.  It's depressing!  My skin hurts from how dry it is.  My fingertips are dry, painful, and cracking.  I feel like I want to fill gloves with lotion and then stuff my hands in them and wear them all day.  Gross.

When it's cold and snowy, I feel better.  At least in the winter.  The house feels cozier when it's colder outside.  We have fires in the fireplace.  The snow is bright and cheerful and clean.  And when there's snow on the ground the sun seems to shine brighter because it reflects off the white.  It's sparkly.  What we have outside right now is the opposite of sparkly.

That must be part of my problem.  Plus, I cannot keep up with my house lately, so that's stressing me out.  We have good reason for the chaos right now--the basement project.  So I know it's temporary, but this time I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around it.  My life with my hubby is a constant stream of projects.  I should be used to this by now.  We finish one thing, and right as we're finishing it and I'm feeling excited about it, he starts something else.  We had just taken down all the Christmas decorations and were packing them away and cleaning up, when he started hauling things up from the basement.  Now there's crap everywhere.  I know it's temporary, but sheesh.  It makes it very hard to feel like doing any chores--what's the point?  I need a swift kick in the pants.

What is all the doom and gloom?  I know more than a couple people out there that are struggling with it right now.  Life can't be that bad.  Hubby was telling me yesterday about a guy he heard on the radio who traveled the world working on a project about finding happiness.  He said the happiest people he found were in the most impoverished parts of the world.  And here we are.  Americans.  With homes, food, cars, iPads.  TV.  Jobs and income.  Why are we so gloomy?  I'm ashamed of myself that I'm this selfish.  Of course, that doesn't make me feel any better, maybe worse, but how stupid.  And lazy.  I am really going to try to shake this monkey off today.  I think if I keep myself busy and productive he'll leave me alone.  It's when I give myself the option of having nothing to do that the crud cloud comes rolling in.  I can't control this wack-a-doo weather, but I can control my own ass.  And whether it's sitting on the couch or not.