So let me say this first – I get depressed in November and December when there’s no sunshine.  Armed with that disclaimer you can decide if you want to read any further – just don’t tell me if you didn’t read my heartfelt soul baring because it would really hurt my feelings.

When I decided to move to Vermont no one warned me that I would spend two months every year growing more morose by the minute while the sun went on vacation.  Even if someone had tried to warn me I probably would have just brushed it off – oh I love a cloudy day.  And that was absolutely true – in Texas.

I know that Texans are prone to bragging and it might sound like that’s what I’m doing but it’s not bragging if it’s the truth and the truth is that the sun shines pretty much all the time in Texas.  Even when it rains the water pours out of the sky like Niagara Falls and then the sun comes right back out.  Believe me – if you live in the land of eternal sunshine a cloudy day can be a welcome change.

So  I’m in Vermont in the depth of dismal, gloomy, dreariness wondering how I wound up here and romanticizing my old sunshine-filled life.  Now I’m old enough to have had several lives back in the Lone Star state so hold on a minute while I put on my rose-colored glasses and take a look at what I left behind.

First there was the life that was expected of a gal back in the good ole days – finish high school, marry someone from my church, live around the corner from my parents, have two or three babies, cook everything from scratch, make my daughters’ clothes, bandage their booboos, and grow prize winning begonias.

Here I go bragging again but I was really good at this life.  I was the June Cleaver of Arlington Texas — I could bake cookies for the PTA meeting, wallpaper the kitchen, feed the babies, and mow the yard all at the same time.  I mostly loved being a domestic diva but eventually my marriage lost its luster, the wallpaper peeled, and the grass all died.  It was definitely time for a grand adventure!

I got a divorce, sold the house with the manicured lawn, bought some Birkenstocks and became a hippie college student smoking pot on my front porch in a little college town in North Central Texas.  I had the time of my life.  My sole goal was to read everything I could get my hands on, have a never-ending supply of girlfriends to sit on the porch with me, and have a long string of superficial affairs with much younger men.  It was a beautiful plan and it worked great for six years.

You know being a student is a wonderful thing.  Sleep ‘til noon and nobody blinks an eye.  Stay up all night smoking pot and then hit IHOP at 4:00 am and people smile knowingly and punch you on the shoulder.  AND if you’re too damn old to be acting like a brazen hussie people give you a high-five and say, “you go girl.”

I’m in desperate need of a new adventure.  I want to sell the house, buy a motorcycle and take off for Mexico.  I want to dance naked by the campfire while a longhaired golden man plays the drums or sit on a rock in the desert and howl at the moon — but it’s eleven degrees outside so there won’t be any naked dancing, motorcycle riding, or howling at least not until spring comes again which of course it doesn’t do in Vermont until June.

So I’m living vicariously through my daughter right now.  What are you and Maggie doing?  Oh we’re playing on the swings and watching the birds. How warm is it?  Oh it’s probably 75. Is the sun shining?  Yeah but we’ve got a cold front moving in and it’s supposed to drop to around 40 tomorrow.  Don’t tell me that, just let me live in the 75 degree sunshine for a few minutes – I can almost feel it through the phone – I can smell the grass and Maggie’s sweet little hatless head.

As long as I can get sunny vacations in my mind I think I can hold out until January when the sun comes back to Vermont.  I mean I’ve made it through eight years and I haven’t gone berserk yet – well not in any way that shows when I’m out in public.