The Winter Blahs, A Cat with Cabin Fever, and Family Visits
Over winter before it’s hardly begun
Last Thursday was COLD.
Like the realfeel was in the negatives cold.
And, as I trudged along to get my walk in, my legs going numb, I wondered how any human survived in the Midwest back in the old days. The tragic answer is probably that a lot of us didn’t make it, in fact.
It made me grateful for being able to be cozied up inside when it’s this cold and/or snowy, but the lack of sunlight – and vitamin D – has got me feeling the winter blues. I don’t think it’s full-on seasonal depression, but it still doesn’t feel great.
Any drastic change of weather is hard for me. I get pressure headaches. My sleep gets messed up. There’s a general malaise. All for a couple weeks or days before I feel normal again???
Funnily, it seems like this season is hard for Juno too – even harder than when daylight savings time ended. He’s been acting up more in the morning and meowing incessantly before jumping up on our bedroom windowsill – even when the blinds are closed.
And poor Jenn, she works from home so she hears every single little meow he makes. On the days she doesn’t leave the house, Juno follows her everywhere, chatting it up with someone who has work and other things to do. It’s sweet that he loves us so much, but sometimes it’s hard when you have to sit down and focus on something and this little void needs attention RIGHT NOW or he may perish.
We don’t think we’ve been neglecting him. We feed him – with a fancy auto feeder. We water him. We play with him. We even let him outside for brief periods of time on the deck.
But still, he is getting cabin fever just like us and winter hasn’t even fully begun!
Hopefully, we’ll figure something out for both his sanity and ours. That or we just all get used to hunkering down.
A Family Visit Through The Universe
We had a very special visit from my Mother-In-Law this weekend! The weather was kind of rainy and foggy, so we ended up doing a lot of indoor activities. We went to our favorite coffee shop, ate some big-ass burgers, and had an overall great time.
The biggest highlight, though, was something we did the first night.
It was an exhibit called N O W I S W H E N W E A R E (the stars) and it was out of this world – pun intended.
Basically, there were a bunch of LED lights hung up in a room that was pitch black save for the aforementioned lights.
This sounds kind of bland, but trust me, it’s not. When you first walk in and your eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark, you almost feel like you’re truly in outer space, floating amongst the stars.
Us and other guests were invited to sit down or lie on the floor, and I happily took them up on it after a bit of wandering through the lights.
As I experienced the space, the prerecorded voice of Andrew Schneider, the artist, played throughout the experience, providing a guided meditation of thinking about the here and now as well as how small we are in this singular moment.
It was a beautiful exhibit that caught me off guard and even had me shed some tears. I wish I had better words to describe how I felt through the experience, but it helped me remember to look for the beauty and joys of even the smallest parts of a day. If you happen to see it coming to your town, I HIGHLY recommend going. It may just change your life too.
The Fiction Corner
Following the theme of cabin fever this week, I wrote something based off a really bad snowstorm I had to drive through one winter many years ago when I worked at a job I didn’t like and lived in an apartment I didn’t like much either.
⚠️There is mention of alcohol in this piece, so if that’s triggering, by all means skip this one, I won’t be offended.
Cabin Fever
I’m sitting in my car, hands death-gripping the steering wheel as my car inches home along the freeway through snowy rush hour traffic.
On a good day, this would only take me 40 minutes to get home.
Today?
Easily an hour.
My windshield wipers throw themselves from side to side, barely keeping up with the snow.
God’s dandruff, falling from the sky.
He doesn’t even see we all just want to go the fuck home.
The only thing I’ve got to look forward to is a case of beer in the back of my car, waiting to be cracked open when I get home.
It’s New Glarus’ Cabin Fever, which seems appropriate enough.
A beer to drown out the smell of marijuana in your bathroom even though you’ve never smoked weed in your life.
A beer to make you so numb you don’t feel the bumping bass of music that caresses you without ever giving up any secrets.
A beer to put you to sleep, drowning out the sound of your downstairs neighbor snores that slip through the apartment’s paper-thin walls.
And when you don’t need any more excuses to leave this godforsaken state, it dumps another foot of snow on your ass. So you drink up once you get home.
The tires slip as my car veers to the right.
The steering wheel tries to escape from my hands as we head toward the ditch.
Visions of an 85-car pileup play through my head.
Dozens killed, dead on impact if they’re lucky.
Others from freezing to death.
It’s one of the worst accidents in history.
All thanks to God’s dandruff.
But that doesn’t happen.
Instead, I’m on the shoulder of the road, hyperventilating as cars cruise by.
Tonight, there will be no life insurance payouts.
No news reporters taking cocaine to stay awake and report through the night.
No cat wondering why their wet food isn’t ready.
Instead, all there will be is a corporate drone sobbing in his car.
Beer in hand, he will drink a bottle or two.
Then, he’ll think about driving.
All the way home, through God’s dandruff.
This Week’s Music Pick
This is the Day - The The
Off of their album Soul Mining, “This is the Day” is a happy sounding song with not-so-happy lyrics. I imagine it illustrates how I and others are feeling about winter right now - everything sounds delightful but inside you’re feeling blah. You think today’s going to be the day when you suddenly feel better but it ends up being more of the same. All you can really do is ride it out until the bad slowly morphs into the good or at least tolerable.
Ryry’s Reads
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Even if you’ve seen the movie, I’d give it a go. Palahniuk's writing is beautifully detailed yet somehow never boring. Plus, the ending is a touch different from the movie. I won’t say much more because you know the first rule of fight club (or you will soon):
You do not talk about fight club.
This is hard. - Sophie Lucido Johnson
Sophie shares many of the difficulties with this time of year, ranging from the lack of sun if you’re living in the Northern Hemisphere to getting waaaaay too many packages in the mail during this consumerist holiday.
You Should Leave Your Home - Chris Dalla Riva
All about how we’re more and more online and leave our houses less and less compared to decades past. There’s some good to it and some bad, but Chris ponders on it with some interesting infographics along the way.
The Rise and (Overstated) Fall of Radio. A Statistical Analysis - Daniel Parris
Speaking of infographics and stats, Daniel takes an interesting look at why radio has fallen – but not quite as far as you would think.
The power of puppy fur - Robin Taylor (he/him)
A heartbreaking tale of grief told through the lens of a childhood puppy.