Confessions of a Light-Deprived Northwesterner

It snowed here today--on April-fricking-first! The weather is making us all a little nuts here. Be gentle with us about our mass caffeine addiction; it's the only thing keeping us upright at this point.

A friend told me on the phone that she thinks one of the reasons she watches CSI Miami is because of all the sunshine. Coincidentally, while she told me this I had a Merchant Ivory DVD paused on my TV. The movie was filmed in India and drips with color--and sunshine. In it, people are trapped by their destinies, lives are ruined, and there is much haunted staring at the camera. But I callously zipped over all that; I wanted those sunny backgrounds, no matter how much misery I had to ignore to get them. My friend and I are after the same thing--we want the assurance that sunshine still exists somewhere in the world.

I know all of you in other areas of the country are buying cotton summer clothing. I envy you. I, on the other hand, just bought a wool Filson "Packer" hat at David Morgan. It's divine. It stops the buckets of ice water from going down the back of my neck while I wait at my end of the leash for Scruffdog to do his bizness. And I think it's stiff enough to double as a helmet should I fall over while trying to retrieve said bizness from the inaccessible places he prefers. I love my new hat. I'm going to wear it every day until the weather gets too warm. Don't worry; I'll get plenty of wear out of it, because that won't happen for about three-and-a-half months (this is Seattle we're talking about.)

Meanwhile, I've reluctantly put dreams of diaphanous cotton dresses and sandals on hold. No, I don't want to hear about your heat wave, or that you've had to turn on your A/C--unless the complaint is accompanied by an airline ticket for me to join you in your "misery"!