From the Inside...Out: I'll Never Get That Back

Today was a busy day….made infinitely busier by the threat of 172 inches of snow…over the next two to four days…from three separate snowstorms. (Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating…just a tad. But we are supposedly getting dumped with 8-16” of the slippery white stuff over the course of the day on Friday, with another storm arriving on its heels on Sunday. And that’s the truth.)

What is it about winter that makes sunny days so frustratingly rare? Have you ever noticed that it’ll be overcast all day…and then the sun will break out a mere fifteen minutes before sunset?! Am I the only one annoyed by this? Don’t answer that…I don’t think I want to know. I snapped this from my bedroom window this morning:

See? All white sky. Our world has rolled back to black & white…and this is IT until spring.

I found myself humming that old Bill Withers song:

Aint no sunshine when she’s gone
It’s not warm when she’s away
Aint no sunshine when she’s gone
And she’s always gone too long
Anytime she goes away.

(The “she” in this case, would be a metaphor for summer. But you got that…right?)

For anyone keeping track, we had 10 hours and 12 minutes of “visible light” today…whatever that means. According to The National Weather Service, the length of day today was a paltry 9 hours and 9 minutes. Evidently, tomorrow will be ten seconds shorter. I would seriously like to know where that 10 seconds is going…and will we be getting it back anytime soon?

I mean…ten seconds a day means we’re losing a whole minute in less than a week, right? I know you’re just dying for me to interject here some examples of what can be done in one minute:

Well. You could:

File approximately four nails
Walk down a flight of stairs, forget what you were looking for, walk back up the stairs…remember (“Aha!”)…and walk back down again.
Sing approximately one half of “Roll to Me” by Del Amitri (Or the whole thing if you sing really fast.)
Move a lamp to a different table, stand and stare intently at the seemingly insignificant, yet remarkably subtle change in the overall ambiance of the space…tapping your finger lightly against your lips…squinting in concentration…only to move the lamp back to its original place.
Approximately 50 ab crunches. (But, why would you want to do that?!)

Strangest new flavor encountered: “Banilla” Stonyfield Organic Yogurt. I can only assume it’s banana and vanilla combined. The obvious question is: Can you actually live somewhere and not have access to bananas, so that “a manual mix” is simply out of the question? There is no off-season for ‘naners….is there? (Susan, my Canadian friend might know this.)

Grossest upfront and personal observation of the week: Never, ever attempt to enter a supermarket if you see several guys staring down into a manhole and one of them has a long hose running into it and you see the word “SEPTIC” printed on a nearby truck. No good smell ever came out of this scene…trust me.

Biggest insult recently encountered: “Word” told me I was suffering from “verb confusion”.

Seriously.

I told “Word” to “Bite me.”

Seriously.

Now, who’s the person I’d speak to about those missing ten seconds?