Good Bye January.

I will be honest, make no excuses. I always hate January by the end of it. Prior to the kiddo we would go on vacation in late January and that seemed to help with my general grouchiness. Now, we can't really travel in the peak of flu and rsv season. No, we are trapped for the majority of the month in our house. I feel a little guilty whining when I know that some people are buried in snow with frigid cold, but bear with me with a little whine about our Pacific Northwest. For at least maybe you see the sun during the month.

First of all don't ever believe somebody when they tell you it doesn't rain that much in Seattle, or Western Washington. The are obviously liars, and or they have lived there in the summer months only. Because having lived in Washington state now for a bit over 20 years, I feel that I can give the honest report that it rains, and it rains for a majority of our seasons. Now, our total rain fall is not that extreme but on average 40 inches of rainfall per year. I think that this total gives a false picture of our reality.

First of all, particularly in the winter months you wake up and its dark and typically hear drops hitting the roof. Drop, dap, drop... dibble, dibble, dop. If the radio is on or the morning news, the weatherperson will be doing their best to describe rain in multiple different terms: increasing showers, decreasing periods of rain, brief periods of cloud break. Once you've left the house, and step over the standing water and brushed away the slime mold and moss that is growing on every object outside you realize that you are standing in a mist. I assume it is this mist that gives us our beautiful green landscape. Its like standing with somebody spraying you with a garden hose or one of those spritzer bottles, and it goes on and on. A damp mist covers you, the sky is gray and dark. You look for a bit of blue sky, but there is none to be found. Just gray, and dark with a mist covering everything. The next day will be a repeat of the previous, though sometimes there is big drops that make you blink when they hit your eye.

I don't remember the conversation with my mother exactly but, we were talking about how stores instantly go from Christmas to spring and summer. And she said something like, there just has to be something in between. I am sure there is something in between. From my standpoint I haven't figured it out yet. Dibble, dibble, dop, drop, drop... drop.