Sniffles and Sneezes

Where are the kleenix? Looks like this year has rolled in spreading colds and sinus infections. Our writer’s retreat was just cancelled with two out of three of us coughing and sneezing, and this morning I woke up looking for tissue. Three out of three now.

Oh, winter. Colorado is stingy with its daylight compared to Texas during these cold months. We celebrated December 21 as the shortest day of the year, eager for the day’s light to be on the other side of the hump. Ever so slowly we began watching it stay a wee bit lighter until 5PM. Night still feels like it slams down way too soon, with a cloak of darkness hanging heavily by the time we sit down to a much too early dinner. By 8:00 it’s already been dark for hours and can so easily feel like bedtime.

When feeling a little puny, winter evenings are best handled by getting warm and comfortable with something good to read. After reading cumbersome teacher portfolios most of the day, laptop positioned, where else but in my lap, glancing back and forth to mark the rubric on my computer screen, my eyes beg for a good reading light and a small, well-written book come evening (Current reading: Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett).

I admit, however, this morning's cheery light leaves me wishing I were tucked around a kitchen table in the hideout mountain cabin with my two writing colleagues, sipping coffee as our pens scratch out a couple of pages on whatever writing prompt that has come to one of us in the night. We’d have a box of kleenix on the table and when done, we would read our words to one another between sniffles and sneezes.