A changed life

When people ask if I like living in the country I always say “Yes in spring, summer and autumn.”

This week I am struggling: I am still trying to accommodate myself to the idea that these long dark nights will be here for three months. And that the grey days and the mist and the overcast skies and the mud will be here for four. Winter gets longer every year, at least to me.

I am trying to summon all my patience (that doesn’t take long) and also to get myself into a Zen-like-going-with-the-flow state of mind, so I can retain my Pollyanna approach to life through the coming months.

(Remember this quote from BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU? -

“You bouncing bunny types are always taken aback when life smacks you in the teeth.”

- that was a direct quote from someone in this house speaking to me.)

I am typing this in bed, as per usual, but now I have the SAD light on the chest of drawers switched on, so anyone walking their dog along the lane and glancing up at our bedroom window will see the strange and eerie, bright white glow, and think we have some kind of alien visitation.

The best medicine for me, though, is actually getting outside under the sky – for at least an hour every day. The garden has never felt so loved.

Inside the house, the Scrabble addiction has had its first casualty.  Yesterday morning I woke from a night full of those ridiculous annoying dreams that wake you up, over and over, and finally at 4.30 a.m. i decided I had had enough, and gave up, fetched a mug of tea, turned on my laptop, and emailed the ageing hippie in Redwood City (she of the trip to the Grand Canyon with the 1971 map.)  It was a sensible time at her house – 8.30 p.m. - and yes, she was up for a game of online Scrabble. We had two games and a nice chat via the message strip at the bottom of the screen. “See you tomorrow!” we said. We’d arranged a game for 6.15 a.m. my time today.

I was so tired last night (having been up for so long…and incidentally my Pollyanna approach had gone AWOL and poor, long-suffering Dave bore the brunt of this when I gave him an undeserved and outrageously unreasonable chewing-up) so that when I went to bed early last night, kissing him good night and saying “I will be nice tomorrow” and his saying “We’ll see,”  I forgot to set my alarm, and so there was poor AH at 10.15 p.m. her time waiting in vain for me to log on. I am SO SORRY, AH.

(photo credit – Isaac took the photo of the tree on this date last year, when he was staying here with us.)