The Januaries

Right around this time of year, even the best of us can come down with a bad case of the Januaries.  Here's why.  Unless you are fortunate enough to live in southern California, or in any other year but this one, southern Florida; it's been dark and cold, it is dark and cold, and it's going to be dark and cold, YUCK!

Now this is what a typical day, when the Januaries come knocking, looks like. It's dark and cold when you wake up. You slog out of bed, get dressed, grab your coffee, and then you get to deal with the cold,snow, ice, or driving rain and:
1.  Drive to work, or 
2.  Drive your children to school, or
3.  Deal with farm animals and livestock, or
4.  Some wonderful combination of the above

Then after having all that fun, you get to have the supreme pleasure of:
1.  Dealing with the pressures and deadlines of work, which somehow seem to be much worse this time of year; or
2.  Cleaning your house, which you just cleaned yesterday and will probably have to clean again tomorrow, or 
3.  Muck stalls, and feed and water.  Gee isn't fun to knock the ice out of the water buckets and then schlep off to the well pump, to haul the water bucket by bucket to the stalls because your line to the barn has frozen? And why is it that the horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs,etc seem to do more of what they do  when the weather is lousy?

So what's a girl to do?  Well there are a few things I've found that help:
1.  Flowers.  All grocery stores sell flowers.  Buy a big bouquet every time you go, and place them where you can see them.
2.  Paint you toenails red.  It's a small thing but it's cheery.
3.   Start a creative project that you can do indoors.  Start a needlepoint, crossstitch, knitting  or quilting project.  If you decide to quilt, go to a sewing store or an online distributer and buy 12 of the prettiest squares you can find and then spend lots of time laying them out, delighting in the colors.
4.  Buy a coffee grinder that's only for herbs and one of those packages of rosemary they sell in the grocery store.  Grind the rosemary and delight in the smell.  It really is wonderful.
5.  Plan a flower garden.  Look at all the gardening magazines and seed catalogs and plan out what you're going to do when the ground thaws.
6.  This is the really important one. In two and 1/2 weeks when we're into February, go outside on a sunny afternoon and look at the quality of light. It's so much stronger and brighter. The days are getting noticeably longer. Winter can toss whatever it feels like at us, but the worst is over.  Spring is on the way