Storm clouds brewing

I say this both figuratively and literally.

The latter first: apparently those of us in Chicago are going to see a lot of rain later today, a week after we saw a lot of snow.  What ever happened to straight winter?  It's almost mid-January.  We are supposed to be in the middle of a deep freeze, yet I'm hearing of flood watches for later today.  While driving earlier this morning, I saw patches of fog at ground level rolling off of snow piles from last week's storm.

And, if I may elevate myself to supreme grumpy status, why is the local news media hell bent on making the weather the lead story every night?  I'm not talking about coverage of larger events like tsunamis or California, just the local forecast.  Last week, we had ten inches of snow dumped on us.  If you watched the nightly news, you'd have though it was 100 feet.  Earlier this week, the lead story was an ice storm on its way into the city.  One of the dime-a-dozen forecasters here actually said that it was "guaranteed" that we would have transformers popping and tree limbs falling, causing blackouts and great amounts of damage.  It never happened (not that I am sad that it didn't.  I couldn't have done justice describing an ice storm better than Jennifer did.  The pictures alone were amazing.  I felt guilty even turning on a light.), which is a good thing, but is asking too much to have charges brought up against an overly hysterical weather reporter now and then?

So buckets of rain are inching their way towards Chicago, which will melt the rest of the snow, and flood an already over saturated ground.  Then we will fall into a deep freeze, as they say that the temperature will not be above freezing for the foreseeable future.

Which means that it will be 80 by Sunday.

Of greater concern to me is the approaching storm that I feel inside my head.  Simply put, I hate this time of year, and I struggle with it every year.  The sun never shines anymore.  I'd move to the arctic for the months of January and February if I could be guaranteed 100% sunshine.  Everything seems gray, from the sky to the sidewalks, to the paint job on every single home.  It brings a perpetual feeling of lethargy that I can't seem to shake, no matter how hard I try.  I have plenty of things to do and plenty of things to look forward to, yet sometimes it seems completely mundane.  Every year, as soon as the hangover from the holidays subsides, I regret the fact that humans do not hibernate.  I'd love to take a nap from now until around St. Patrick's Day.

The key to making it through these next two months is to immerse myself in things that I know I can do, like writing, reading, and research.  It seems so easy just to say that I will do it, yet I cannot fathom how difficult it seems sometimes.  There's not much I can say in terms of excuses.  I hate it when people say "snap out of it!" but truthfully I know that that is all I can do.  I have to attack these feelings.  I know that there are many worse things I could be dealing with.

It could be worse.  I could be living in Washington DC this week.