Blah blah blah

The world outside looks all one color, if you can even call ‘drab grey’ a color (Crayola certainly doesn’t). The snow is dirty, the roads are salted, and the sky is heavy with a low blanket of clouds. You’d think those clouds could insulate the earth and keep it warm. But it’s cold and freezing rain has covered our sidewalks and surrounding roadways, making travel a danger. Winter is hard.

It’s January 10 and I’m already so tired of it. The chill that sucks the will to do anything out of my bones. The draft that seeps in through the windows. The pervasive grey that casts its pallor over everything it covers. Even the few rays of sunshine seem cruel, as it’s almost always far too cold to go outside and soak in what looks like warm hope.

Pregnancy complicates winter, I am discovering. With James and Owen both due in November I missed out on the fun twice before. Turns out, I shouldn’t run in the deep chill/over the frozen sidewalks. I don’t really want to anyway. Exercise on the inside is relegated to whatever DVD or online workout I can find, which seem boring and either too hard to safely do while pregnant or too easy for Roy to join me in. I thought you’re supposed to be hot during pregnancy, and I was kind of hoping that this time around it would serve as a nice insulator against the winter. Roy will boldly testify that I’m every bit the ice block that I’ve been in years past when we crawl under the covers at night.

So I currently feel very stuck inside, not pregnant enough to wear cute maternity clothes, but just pregnant enough to feel unattractive in my normal clothes. Everything right now just screams “BLAH!”

I’m reading a book about the American justice system and the numerous injustices that occur on a daily basis in this country. It’s literally making me sick to my stomach, as good and important of a book as it is, and the tales of those locked up against their will, and undeservedly so, underscore my own feelings of cabin fever.

Obviously I need some type of project, or some kind of getaway to look forward to. A new hobby or form of exercise. Or a shopping trip for the cute maternity clothes that I definitely don’t have because I’ve never been pregnant in winter before.

I’ll keep taking my Vitamin D. I’ll keep exercising even though it feels stupid. I’ll keep reading and going to work. I’ll keep on keeping on. But, anybody have any brilliant ideas for helping make winter less, for lack of better terms, sucky?

Thank you for enduring this depressing entry. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess I’m not alone. We need each other in these times especially, even as it seems so much easier to crawl under a pile of blankets and hibernate until April. Who’s coming over for coffee?