Winter blues

The above is not that.

Today is a sunny but cold day. Unfortunately, it's still rather gray inside. I have realized that these long Maine winters do indeed get me down. It's not just the lack of light, and the cold, but the urge to hibernate. Activities that sound good in theory, especially when they are at night, are hard for me to go to. A twenty minute drive in the dark on a snowy road seems like a very long drive indeed.

Winter is six months long here. That is just too long. It is not just me who feels this way - a hefty bulk of the population becomes clinically depressed during this season. The crisis beds and psychiatric units fill to capacity, and they triage carefully (or not) because there is simply not enough room for all those needing help. The state should distribute sun lights to everyone. I wrote that in jest, but I bet that it would ease many a person's winter blues, or cabin fever as they call it here. Maybe our crazy high level of domestic violence would go down (and the high rate of alcoholism, substance abuse, smoking. . .my, this state isn't the wonderland that visitors see, is it?)

Maybe everyone should take up spinning wool. Just taking photos of my latest skein made me feel good. That one was labor intensive. Those strips of fabric hanging off it are hand-tied. Unfortunately, this lovely silk doesn't photograph well because of exactly the thing that makes it so lovely. It's colors appear to change, depending on the way light hits it. I'm sleepy, and there's a word for this phenomonem, but I'm so sleepy that I can't even think of how to google it, nor do I remember what the name of this Indian silk is. Sigh.