Appreciate

What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
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Sun.

Growing up in California, sun was something we took for granted. Or, in my case, came to despise. I've always been somewhat nocturnal, and the insult that the sun was to my eyes just can't be understated. That giant nuclear reactor in the sky and I never really got along. If it wasn't handing out sunburns like advertising flyers in a mall parking lot, then it was at least bumping the temperature up higher than any human being should reasonably find comfortable. I hid from it, avoiding the outside world and all the joys thereof in the process. Even in California, I was more Goth naturally than any face painted lover of the dark, if only due to my skin tone. I loved rainy days, and the deeper the cloud cover the happier I was. And then, I moved.

There's a reason people make the joke that I live in the frozen north. Most of that reason is based on stereotypes that don't really apply to the specific area I live in, but sometimes that stereotype holds true. This past winter was one those times. Since late november, if it hasn't been snowing (which, it hasn't much though it did more than it last year) it's pretty much been raining. And when I say raining, I don't mean what I'd normally mean by "raining" here. You see, typical Washington rain is light. It's barely even there. More like the sky spitting at you occasionally throughout the day. It's not even a full on drizzle. Not like down in California. In California it was much more like the sky splitting open and dumping a swimming pool on your head. This year, it's rained like it did in California. Huge torrential downpours that lasted not just days at a time, but weeks. Weeks, and weeks, and weeks, of nothing but never ending walking around with a spillway emptying onto your head. The creek out front has flooded twice. Once badly enough that the city had to send out trucks to block off the road so no one attempted to drive through and get their car stuck. Normally that creek is only about a foot and a half wide, and 8 inches deep. Just to illustrate the point. The ground is so completely saturated now even after a break from the rain, when it starts up again there are flash flood warnings for half the county. And when we get wind, like we did yesterday (hurricanes, woohoo), the ground isn't solid enough to keep the trees from blowing over.

That much rain wears on a person. That little sun also wears on a person. I mean, it's bad enough that I live far enough north that in December we're lucky if we get a full 8 hours of sun in a day, but on top of that, at noon it's been almost pitch black because of the weather.

So. I am now a BIG fan of sunshine. I crave it. I get up in the morning and look outside hoping, praying, that the sun will be out. And when it is, no matter how cold it may be, no matter what else I had planned for the day, I head outside -- even if it's just for a lil bit of a road trip. I revel in sunshine now, just standing on my balcony basking in it, letting it soak into my skin, drowning in the warmth of it. As proof I've got more of a tan now, even in winter, than I ever did living in California. Skin cancer risks be damned.