Blaah...blaaah...blaaaah!.....

At the county fair, summer 2008

Just feelin' a little BLAH...I got my first cold of the winter, and this time of year in this gloomy, depressed state is something that stretches the very fiber of one's last nerve. It's not winter. It's not yet spring. It's exceedingly dull and monotonous. Honestly, I feel like I should write a book called THE LONG WINTER. Oh wait, someone else already did.

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And, add to that the constant bad economic and political news that brings to mind bread lines and desperate people, and you want to scream. I've had to tune the news out on weekends, I can only handle so many days in a row of knowing how much of that hard-earned retirement money my husband put away all these years has gone right out the window...and things like more and more tax evaders in the cabinet while we faithfully pay our own, Congress spending billions to help HAMAS and the PALESTINIANS rebuild, spending money like there is literally NO TOMORROW on things like the study of pig manure and odor control(!), becoming more friendly with the likes of CUBA and RUSSIA and making friendly gestures to IRAN, BEGGING CHINA TO KEEP BUYING OUR TREASURY NOTES (!!!!).

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And then there's good ol' Chavez sending encouraging messages to Obama to continue on the path to SOCIALISM, (oh, and isn't socialism just GREAT?!) can it possibly be any worse? And, the leader of our closest ally in the whole world whose soldiers fought, bled and died with ours over in Iraq is insulted on the world stage?!

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The windows I look out of need a good washing. I can't wash them. The view out the window is morbid. The grass is dull and matted, full of sticks, stones and various other winter debris, rocks and pieces of pavement from the road grader during the snowstorms, shingles have blown off the house, pieces of siding, too in some of the worst windstorms and prolonged periods of the coldest and worst weather I've ever seen in Michigan. (No one better mention man-made global warming to me!)

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The hostas that were snowed on in Fall before I got the dead leaves pulled and burned are all nasty and dead and yellow, plastered to the mulch that has been blown and scattered from the garden area and thrown willy-nilly all over the yard.

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The four walls are closing in on me, and I'm feeling a bit like the sheep in the photo above...."Just keep your head down, keep eating, and soon we'll be able to bust outta here!" ....(and the eating part...unlike these sheep, oh....how I wish I could STOP!)

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And, wouldn't you know it, (my own fault) I messed up my good walking habit of three to four miles three to four times per week that I'd kept up for nearly two years straight, the winter weather was so extreme this year, and have packed on a more than just the usual few pounds this winter so that I honestly DO resemble these sheep here in my rotundity. Except the sheep can be shorn and instantly look much slimmer. Not so with my little fat rolls that I have hatched this winter, they'll be much more difficult to banish.

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I did book a cut and color for tomorrow, so we'll see if that brightens the mood any; though it's for sure not going to make me look thinner. God help me if I had to look at gray hair.... gray skies, gray fields, gray fog, gray rain....no more GRAY!!

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It's just amazing how the lack of sunshine and anything green can just get a girl down, and then add to that piles of kleenex and a really sore nose, not sleeping good at night and sneezing so much you think your head might explode. I'm living in a fog that won't let go of my head right now. But.....I do think tonight instead of counting sheep, though, that I should be counting my blessings, which are many.

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I'll be counting the days until May. Meanwhile, I'll slog through! Won't we all. Thanks for putting up with my BLAH-ness!

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And, tomorrow, I have a date with a can of robin's egg blue spray paint and some thrift store finds: that'd cheer anyone up! I hope to be able to post some astonishing feats of spray paint wonderment in the next few days......

How do you survive the last clutches of winter?