Gray Skies are Gonna...

Is it still January? I lose track these days, and I try to post at least once a week, but lately it's been gloomy and rainy around here and I need a certain amount of sunlight to keep from feeling glum.

It reminds me of the winter I spent in the Santa Cruz Redwood Rainforest during an "El Nino" year. I was in my second year of college and having to get up at 7 in the morning to hike over to an early organic chemistry class. That was depressing enough, but then having to do it in the cold rain didn't help. Everyday I'd hike to class under gray skies, as the winds howled, and the incessant rain pittered and patterred. I carried an umbrella, but it only served to keep my hair dry. The rest of me would sit in class soaking wet and shivering until it was time to walk through the rain again. Even when it did stop raining, the water would continuously trickle from the trees. You would think that would be enough to keep me awake during class, but apparently not. I was under a constant rain cloud.

I slipped into a mild seasonal depression. All I wanted to do everyday is just sleep. I slept in my dorm room, and I slept in class when I did manage to convince myself that I cared enough about passing my classes, and would brave the weather to do so. I spent most of those days asleep and/or wet, so we can safely say that I didn't fare well that quarter in school. It was a good thing the skies started to clear by spring quarter, because if they hadn't, I probably wouldn't have been there the next two years to finish school.

These days I am not getting up early to brave the weather to make it to class, but twice a week, I have to pull myself out of bed, get dressed, dress the older boy, diaper the younger one as I put him to bed in sweats, grab their snacks and lunches, maneuver our too-wide bike trailer through our gate without knocking the bike over onto myself, throw their lunches and snacks prepared the night before in the back, put a jacket on both boys, place their helmets on and my own, and then try to handle them with all their puffy layers to place them in the trailer while I try to manipulate the straps and clips with cold, numb fingers - all of this to get Big Brother to preschool. Once this is all done, I have to then pedal two miles up a steady incline that might as well be Mount Mckinley as my out of shape body can handle little exercise. The wind is of course howling against me and the drizzle gently misting my hair. I get to his preschool and get off the bike to find my legs feeling heavy and tingly all over. I must then proceed to remove all the straps and gear with my frozen claw-like hands. Once the older boy is all signed in, I must then convince the younger Bee that we will have equally as much fun at home than Big Brother will have at school, and then rehelmet and restrap him into the trailer. At least, it's all downhill from his school.

My mom laughs at me when I tell her about my biking adventures. She just chuckles and brings up her own version of walking ten miles through the snow and back story. Her story about how she waded thought the Rio Grande while she was 7 months pregnant with my brother and then almost got run over by a border patrol lady in her jeep who was the person responsible for stripping her of her passport in the first place on orders from my grandmother (dad's mom) who she was friends with. Or the time she walked three miles in the snow to get to work at 3 am because my father wouldn't be bothered to get up and give her a ride. I apparently did not inherent my mom's brave soul.

At least the skies have cleared temporarily, so I must go and soak up some sun while it lasts.