Winter doldrums

Just the other day, while sitting at the Black Chicken Coffee Shop, Kim pulled this thought out of the frozen air:

"I really don't like this time of the year," she said. You could practically see the ice crystals forming on each spoken word as they fell from her mouth. "It's really depressing from January until March."

I think she pretty much nailed it.

Even now, as I attempt this blog, my thought process is on life support, the indicator needle hovering just above zero. But that's the point, isn't it? It's why we're in the doldrums. Winter doldrums. Sigh.

Even cutting grass sounds good to me right now.

Mostly, it's just too cold to feel like doing anything. So what do you do after New Year's Day? Trudge to work, where the thermostat is usually set at a cost-cutting 10 degrees below arctic.You put in your eight hours and then go home, where the thermostat is set at ... well, you get the picture.

In fact, the hours of daylight in a day, while lengthening, still aren't enough. It's still dark way too long. Dark by 6 p.m. Dark doldrums.

I try to stake exciting little mile markers into the tundra of my winter months. There's New Year's Day, of course. Underhill Rose is coming to town next Saturday. The Super Bowl is coming up and so are the Winter Olympics. Some potentially exciting ACC basketball games dot the calendar, but what happens if you don't care for sports? Kim and I each have a birthday in February, which — woo hoo — pretty much takes care of that month while reminding us (as if we needed to be reminded) that we're a year older. Thank you for that.

At least we get cake.

I've tried to rationalize that the doldrums are the time you need to recharge, revitalize, regroup for the coming year non-winter months, and while that may be true, in the end it doesn't help much. The mile-markers never seem to be enough.

And I'm still cold.

I guess I ought to be grateful there are no summer doldrums.