With Grandma Millie on our wedding day. The last time I got to see her.
My 95 year-old grandmother has been moved from the hospital back to receive hospice care at the nursing home facility where they know her. According to the most recent email from my uncle she’s stopped taking all liquid intake and is receiving only pain medication. My family is preparing for this to be the end. Would you please join us in praying for my Grandma Millie (Mildred Scott) and for all of her family.
I am a morning person and I love winter (being an introvert who doesn’t mind being housebound…but I imagine that if I had small children scaling the walls I’d feel differently). However, I STILL think Daylight Savings is of the Devil. There is absolutely no logic to having the clocks switch around twice a year. Really and truly there isn’t, and I loathe the disturbance in my routine.
Melanie,
I’m sorry that you’re feeling so down and defeated. My little one won’t go outside without me, sun or shadow, so I know how you feel about cranky monkeys underfoot. Perhaps try to focus on Jesus’ Agony in the Garden as He too knew what was coming and dreaded it. I pray you get through this season with things being better than you expect.
Anne Kiwi
Oh, dear Melanie. I know how you feel! I am being reminded of those days in little doses here with my one sweet little one but it wasn’t that long ago I had more little ones under foot and up walls. Of course, we didn’t have the winter to contend with. Instead, it was the summers which although horrific in their own right, are nothing like your winters,
I know. Here you can go outside sometime if you want or need to. It might have to be 6 o’clock in the morning and it might still be warm, not cool, but it’s doable.
Maybe you could approach your decluttering desire in bite sized chunks that might be more manageable with littles around. I tend to put off a big project because I think “I can’t do it all right now” but always feel better when I don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And a little bit of progress might help you beat back the blues. Also, don’t forget the value of exercise to naturally boost those endorphin levels. Crazy dance around the house with your babes or maybe try out some kid friendly exercise DVD’s from the library. Nothing strenuous or complicated. My kids used to walk along with me and Leslie Sansone when they were little. They’d be mortified to admit it now. : )
Hmmm. I almost put a “What’s not to love?” post about Fall Back last night. I’m not a morning person, but since I have to get a kid on the school bus by 7:30 AM—-who is not a morning person either—and not having to get up in total darkness for a couple more weeks is wonderful.
My kids were happy to play in the backyard in the dark on days that were not too cold, or cold days that included snow. Maybe installing a powerful back porch light will make it possible for them to play out there while you fix dinner? But I do sympathize with the inevitable cabin fever. Are there other similarly situated moms to whom you trading afternoons of dropping older kids off at one another’s houses? That might give some relief.
Any chance you all could move to Texas?
This isn’t encouraging. 3:30? That is sheer hell. I don’t know how you do it, but I’m impressed that you find the strength to push through. I’m not sure all the hot tea in the world can get me through a Yankee winter.
Many hugs.
It’s so funny how where we grew up affects our seasonal affective disorder! I love going back to the regular clock so that it gets dark earlier in the evening. While I’m thoroughly acclimated to Texas cold (although not Texas heat) I miss the end of year feeling of early darkness. And I loathe the variability of Texas winter weather. A little bit of bitter cold, followed by a week of 70+ weather, followed by snow, followed by storms and tornandos…
I love the changing seasons and would happily stay on the standard clock year round. I crave getting up earlier in the spring and summer with the sun, but that springing forward business ruins it.
I’m having iPad typing problems, I’ll continue when I’m at home in front of a keyboard.
I do understand the stress of the constantly underfoot, though. I only have David, but he’s got this personality quirk where he isn’t happy unless he’s right next to you and helping you do whatever you’re doing, even if helping isn’t actually helpful. It’s impossible to get any work done, even the most basic like emptying the dishwasher, without bribing him with television.
And this week we’re dog sitting. Now, I love dogs, and especially this dog who reminds me of my childhood dog, but she is so anxious being in a strange place and away from her people that she just roams and follows me about everywhere.
Although we’ve had a few lovely moments of “child and dog are playing, and we can do chores uninterrupted” its more usually both child and dog are overly interested in ‘helping’ with the laundry and dished. Oof.
Melanie….what you said. I sympathize. I am infected with SAD and even though I’m more of a morning person it makes no difference. And I have more difficulty seeing in the dark when driving…and getting older the cold (and more recent crazy weather in general) and dangerous conditions only add to increasing arthritis which is also effected by the depression that comes with darkness. Why do you think they have so much more alcoholism and suicides in the Scandinavian countries?!
Weird, but in Germany it was the phenomena of the “foehn effect” on the natives who don’t know how to act with the sporadic warm winds coming over the alps that give excuses for husband abuse in courts, etc. (kinda like another pms syndrome). And when the extremes of warm weather arrived one fall the people started stripping, etc. It’s not funny!!!
So, yes indeed, every little bit of light helps the attitude….even when it’s unconscious in some but witnessed by those nevertheless upon whom they take out their SADness!
Melanie, I have lived in New England my whole life, and I can say with complete sincerity: you’re right it is Miserable! Snow: OK, cold: OK (well, sort of), but 15+ hours of dark: sucks. The best thing about standard time is that it now ends earlier (March) and begins later (November) than it did when I was a kid.
I love winter and I enjoy the cold (no bugs!) when dressed properly. But I deplore DST. I think it is the stupidest and most pathetic attempt by Congress to play God and fiddle with time. It throws of my schedule and always manages to screw up my kids somehow. Useless stupidity.
“I’d like to know what the government did with all the daylight we saved LAST year!”
Agree, DST is an annoying and pointless exercise.
I now live at 44 deg. south, having lived for my first twenty-five years at 37 degrees south, and every winter I am very aware of the extra-low angle of the sun for a month each side of mid-winter. Maybe our place of origin is sort of programmed into us?
I’ve found it helpful to keep meals simple [few ingredients] and to prepare everything directly after the midday meal, freeing up that late-afternoon time considerably.
Setting out breakfast-things and clothes etc. the night before can save precious minutes next day.
Hope you can find some of these windows of opportunity too.
Bless you.
For you From Fr. Austin Fleming at A Concord PastorMONDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2011
Monday Morning Offering – 169
Coffee in the Morning by George Mendoza
Good morning, good God…
It’s only mid-November
yet these shortened days already
shade my heart and leave me
longing for the spring while
winter waits, just weeks away�
The end of saving daylight
darkens every afternoon,
sunny days and cloudy all alike:
a hush falls by four and five
finds the moon bright, full,
shining on a leafy harvest rustled
from bare branches all around�
Remind me, Lord, how moonlight�s
but the sun diffused: Sol�s warmth,
now cooled and wrapping nature�s shoulders
for a good night�s sleep,
is bound for wintry rest�
November�s moon is August�s sun:
one source, one heat, one light,
one hope that winter�s chill will bow,
come time, and yield once more
to light that saves, to longer days,
to nature�s greening once again
and waking to the spring�
Give me, a child of your light,
safe passage through this time;
give me hope to wait the Day
whose warmth no wind can chill,
whose light no darkness knows,
whose sun will never set�
Receive my morning offering, Lord,
as this new day, this week begins –
and hold me
in a season of your peace�
Amen.
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11