What to think of during these silver and gray and white days (and why does "gray" seem so much grayer when it's spelled "grey") when energy is sucked away by the relentless wind, and the snow, so eagerly looked for around Christmas time, turns to ice/sleet/rain and back to snow?
I always have a moment (day or two) of panic after the Christmas decorations are packed away when I get an glimpse, unobscured, down that long, shiny tunnel of ice that leads to Spring. I can see Spring waving greenly at the end, but wonder how many times I will slip and fall before I reach it.
All I want to do is nap, or read by the fire or eat cookies (but not bake them). I think this state is called "hibernation" and everyone else I encounter seems to be experiencing it too.
When I muster the energy to go out to the store, my feet weighed down with socks and boots, I see everyone else trailing around in a similar fashion, staring glumly at the shipped-in-from-afar vegetables(we're too lazy at this point to even try to be localvores)and the palid, "previously-frozen" fish and the somehow compelling cheese aisle. I see a lot of people in the wine section. I notice lots of bags of taco chips in shopping carts - or was that just my shopping cart? I took a brief census of my shopping cart recently: carb, veggie, carb, carb, carb, fish, meat, carb, carb, cheese, cat and dog food and - oh - carb.
The ever-wise and knowing "they" tell us to shop the outside perimeter of the food store if you want to lose weight and eat healthily. In my store, that path will take you from the organic section to the fruits and vegetables to lean protein and soupcon of "healthy" carbohydrates and around to the newspapers just before the checkout where, if you haven't already lost your appetite, you will after reading the headlines. But I am impelled down the dangerous canyons in the middle of the store - to the raisin bread, sugary cereal, cookies, crackers, processed foods and pasta - and then to the ice cream.
After paying for my misdeeds "credit or debit" I am temporarily aroused to physical exertion by the challenge of negotiating the icy and precipitously tilted parking lot, grappling with my cart like a wrangler with a wild mustang, against the wind.
I'll get my bearings long about the second week of January and begin to actually look forward to the months of snow and cold ahead...until then? I usually eat all the chips on the way home.
