february funk

Old man winter and I have kept things pretty chummy this year.  I've managed to keep my eye on the silver linings of sap boiling, fire stoking, book reading, food eating and tea drinking, and not dwell much on the darkness and cold and bitterness.

But.

It seems a case of that nagging late february funk has been trying hard (haaaarrrd) to creep in on me these past few days.

This morning, after waking up (much later than I'd intended, after going to bed at a fairly decent time with the goal to rise a while before my little lass and hence get a big fat dose of mama time) to a power outage and icy cold bitterness, I found myself wallowing more than a bit and in need of rescue from succumbing to the blues.  The power came back on after a while, but I sort of cruised along on autopilot for most of the morning, trying to be cheerful with Claire, trying to stay warm (I wasn't motivated enough to go scrounge for dry kindling with which to start a fire and I'm too stubborn to turn on the heat, because we haven't so far this year and I don't want to break that), trying to think of fun things to do with her, trying to keep her newly-three-year-old mood swings at bay while staring mine down as well.  I called Mike for some cheering up, and it helped a bit.  I mean, it's not really his thing, talking on the phone and playing cheerleader.  Probably like it isn't a lot of guys' thing.  But he put in a good effort and that alone, the intention, along with hearing his voice, helped.  I made a very big cup of tea.  I got dressed (at about, um, 1:45 in the afternoon) and made an effort to make an effort.  A cute skirt with tights, fuzzy warm boots, fuzzy warm sweater, earrings and a colorful scarf.  Leg warmers, even.  For real.  It wasn't just jeans and a long sleeved t shirt, anyway, and that was the point.  And then of course just getting out of the house and going to work was helpful too.  After work I decided to swing by the library and then Claire and I walked around town a bit, stomping fallen icicles at the park and then stopping for an enormous mug of hot cocoa at one of our local coffee shops.  Complete with whipped cream, cocoa, and mini chocolate chips.  Very, very good.  Claire decided that we should drink it there and really, that was a good call.  It turned our outing into more of an adventure and I needed that.  We lingered over the yummy treat and she exclaimed (quite loudly) several times "oh this is goooood!".   And then we walked some more before crunching icicles again and heading back home.

February can be hard.  Cabin fever.  Winter blues.  Today, I had it, whatever you want to call it.  I felt tired and cranky and unmotivated and like I was just some lazy being sitting around in my pjs every day reading books and making lists of things I want to do but not actually doing any of them.  I was snappy over the littlest, silliest things.  I was way down in that "everything feels monotonous and stagnant" mindset and it wasn't pretty.

So the morning was horrid and the afternoon got better after I made an attempt to pull myself out of funkytown.  And sometimes all it takes is that attempt.  Willing yourself (by which I mean myself) to exert just a little bit of energy.  Go outside.  Go for a walk.  Do something.  And the reminder to myself that within hours my outlook will likely be rosier and things will indeed seem brighter.  My life, it turns out, is not really stagnant and monotonous (well, at times it is monotonous, but usually pleasantly so and besides, I kind of signed up for that with the whole parenthood thing).  And I am not really just a lazy bag of bones who never gets out of my pjs and does nothing more than make lists of things I can't ever hope to attain.

I am way more than that.  I often even cross things off those pesky lists.  While not snapping at loved ones and fully dressed in non-pajamas, I'll have you know.



(if I had photos to add to this post, there would be one of the amazingly therapeutic and quite beautiful hot cocoa and one of my leg warmers,  but I have none to share)