Seasonal Depression

In my entire life, I've never lived in a place with such a miserable and depressing Winter!

I grew up in the hot, humid Summers and the mild Winters of Texas.

Not only that, but I spent 10 years (minus my deployments to Iraq and Japan) in sunny southern California!

That's my ENTIRE career that I was lucky enough to be stationed up and down the coast of SoCal (from San Diego to Orange County).

You can imagine that New England was going to be quite an adjustment for me (to put it mildly). 

I got out here in November at the dead end of Fall.

Fall was gorgeous....cold...but gorgeous.
I've never seen leaves turn colors so vibrant like the pic below in my entire life!

 

Coming from Orange County (CA), anything below 50 degrees is considered cold to me.

Then came Winter....

WHAT THE HECK?!?

It was cold, miserable, snowy, rainy, slushy...did I mention MISERABLE?!

I totally became a "Winter hermit", and refused to leave my house. 

I didn't want to drive in the snow, walk in the snow, see the snow, or be cold.

Internet shopping became second nature to me because even driving to Target for basic necessities (like toilet paper) was not going to happen...yes...I order toilet paper online.

I was depressed all the time, and I grew to totally resent New England.

I realized I was suffering from seasonal depression (totally serious!) when I talked to my friend Jen.

She is a Missouri girl who packed up, with no job, no plan, and moved to San Diego (where we met and became friends) simply because of the Winters in Missouri!

She explained to me she had seasonal depression, and that there was no way in hell that she could ever live in a place with Winters like Missouri ever again.

I contemplated on more than one occasion about going back to my parent's house in Texas for the Winter.

The only thing that stopped me was the fact that Nick and I have spent SO MUCH time apart in our marriage between deployments, training, and separate duty stations.

 I just couldn't do that to him...or our little D.

Yesterday, we finally got some AH-MAZING weather!

We are talking high 50's, and the sun was shining all day long!

D and I spent 3 hours outside just hanging out, and Nick even came home early from work to enjoy the weather with us.

Just that little bit of sunshine for a few hours put me in the best mood I've been in since moving out here!

I couldn't believe how much a little sun just boosted my mood and energy!

D and I even cooked dinner wearing 6 inch esparadilles that I bought for Spring!

I really hope the weather stays like this, because I don't think my mental state can handle any more dreariness.

After the mood boost yesterday, I told Nick that now that I know that it was the weather making me so depressed out here, I may just have to move back home Texas every Winter :-)

 I've got this lovely bed to work with for my Spring garden. I'm thinking tomatoes...and anything else that's easy that I can't kill.