whether the weather would rather I wither.....who knows?

Before I came to the Oxford, a friend passed on to me an "Unofficial Guide," the very first page of which reads,

"As an intro of sorts, here are a few impressions that we would like to share:

1. It really does rain a lot. We know you think there is no possible way for it to be as bad as people say, but you are wrong."

And they were...well...right.

I have to admit, however, that my biggest frustrations/complaints have had less to do with the rain itself, and more to do with a weird combination of uncertainty and monotony.

[other words that could be substituted for 'monotone,' according to my computer's thesaurus: 

                             vapid, unrelieved, insipid, stodgy, jejune, unimaginative, and dullsville (my fave). 

And all of those are also accurate.]

To explain:

UNCERTAINTY=

• Leaving on a train back to Oxford at the end of March, and realizing that—somewhere in between drizzly London and the end of my book's chapter—some [terrible] places in the world like to still SNOW IN SPRING. Can't handle it.

• Going to a lecture on your bicycle in a skirt and Toms in the daytime; coming out and it's dark and you don't have bike lights and it's way too cold for a skirt and it's raining.

• Traveling to beautiful Ireland in the Spring and discovering NOT rolling, green, sunny hills, but cold.gray.wet. snow. I repeat: SPRING. Lies, Phil, all lies.

(Those white spots are giant snowflakes outside this place, not evidence of a dirty lens, promise.)

MONOTONY=

• Weeks on end of the same unfortunate weather.

Every once in a while, I take a screen shot of the forecast out of pure exasperation, but then fail to do anything with it [because we all know that complaining via twitter doesn't accomplish anything but blogging about it totally does]. Here are a few such examples that I found scattered around my desktop.

But look! Sun! (which would have been great, had it actually shown up in real life...)

The content of that last picture (i.e. all the dang cloudiness in this Florida girl's everyday reg), however, is what leads to the pure joy that sunshine brings.

And there are some downright gorgeous days here. The sunshine that seemingly emanated from the heavens the past couple of days, for example, made my heart sing. (And while Guinness claims that they're the ones who produce poetry, I think that last line was a pretty decent attempt.)

(This picture was the inspiration for this tweet.)

Even Rosetta knows it's true:

Okay, venting=complete. (And prayers for a continued increase in temperature=constant. Especially since there's snow forecasted for tomorrow**...)

Hoping it's warm and sunny wherever you are!

-M


**I typed up this post a few days ago, and the forecast was [unfortunately] correct-- snow flurries all day. But the sun is shining today as I partake in outdoor b-day festivites with a bunch of pals, woo hoo! Our spirits rise with every degree.