Chandler The Robot

I walked outside today, and I noticed right off the bat that something felt different. Did I drink too much caffeine this morning? Maybe I had a bit too much of that sugar coated cereal. What was it? And then I looked up and saw it. Ah, that's what a blue sky looks like. This is how the sun on my skin feels. "Come on, I'm hungry," Nick hollered from the car. I stuffed my oversized purse down next to my snow boots as I closed the passenger side door. "Looks like the rain cleared out most of the inversion last night." "Yeah, it looks like it." God, it felt good to see the world with a sky blue tint!

Aren't seasons funny? I think the seasons were set up by a very smarty-pants mother (mother nature, we call her) to be a big life lesson, a reminder to us all, that just when you think you can't take any more, the seasons change, if you can just hold on.

I remember those sweltering summers in Austin.The temperature rises up over a hundred each afternoon, sometimes even in the mornings. When you sit in your car a pool of sweat begins to form around the seat of your jeans, and with your hair pasted to the sides of your face and bangs sticking to your eyelids it's difficult to see ahead in order to drive properly. The heat waves dance across the roads not helping the situation any.

I had some crazy friends that used to bike from place to place, mad crazy for a Pabst Blue Ribbon whenever they finally tumbled inside the bar, or restaurant, or a belly dancing class the rest of us were in. The sidewalk burns through your rubber flip flops. Ice cubes never stood a chance. Just when you've slammed down that last bottle of aloevera after a careful application to your sun-burt shoulders you notice a cool breeze lift a tuft of hair away from the back of your neck. Your ice cubes maintain their geometry a bit longer in your glass of sweet tea. You realize the fall is coming and...

 you are so ready for this.

Well, my blue sky didn't last very long. After we had driven down town the smog had returned, a drab grey cloud-covering draped itself across my vibrant blue sky. Nope the winter's not over yet, not even close. 

As the evening arrived, doctor nature prescribed a mild case of snow flurries outside of the window. Just when the grass had begun to show its pretty green face in sacred patches all over the city, a storm has suddenly arrived on the scene now, fierce, powerful, and with not even a smidgen of mercy. (P.S. as I typed in "smidgen" I was super surprised to discover that "smidgen" is actually a word. Who knew?!) 

Snow completely burried the streets, the trees, the cars. Now only white, white, white. 

But it's o.k. you know. Sure I feel a little sad when I'm cold and the sun hasn't paid me a visit in weeks, just like a long lost cousin who visited rarely, but when she was near, sitting next to me at the kitchen counter, she always knew the right thing to say. It's o.k. because, I already know that the moment I've convinced myself that I can't stand to bang my ugly rubber boots together on the front porch one more time, and I'm through with the shivering and the sniffling, and the praying that I'll make it safely on the journey from my front door to my car in my ridiculously high (but seriously fabulous) shoes, I'll feel a tiny patch of warmth on my shoulder and I'll need to squint just a little, and I'll think to myself, 

"I am SO ready for this!"

Honestly, Meg