Let there be light. Please!

I've been funking for several days. The cold wind, the white-gray sky, the early dark (soon to become earlier darker, DST ending on 11/7), the care of aging animals, two evening meetings that were . . . difficult . . . to live through, not to mention the tedium of preparing the minutes, which, in these cases, I feel, need to be verbatim. It wears me down. During the week I had one of my rarely-indulged twelve-hour sleeps: went to bed at 7pm and stayed there, mostly unconscious, until time to get up and, once again, shoulder my yoke. 
The season of dry hands, dry skin everywhere, has arrived. Lotioning, as an activity, is not so luxurious in the dark and cold as it is in the balmy warmth of summer. 
Life has not been fun.


Deprived of sun, I have turned to illusive sources of light and warmth. I dig in the jewelry box for all the sparkly things that I own. Pearl and silver and faceted jewelry, the prisms of color and glimmers of light provide remembrance of human-friendly seasons. Pearly-pale nail polish to reflect any stray glimmer of illumination in my environment. I have discovered sparkly body lotions: gold, silver, pink.
Arrayed in my faux glow I emerge luminous as the interior of an oyster shell.


Remember that gaudy colorful bracelet? Wore it yesterday, received compliments from fellow color addicts. I could recognize them by their glazed eyes as they stared hypnotized by the jewel tones.
Listen: We take our pleasures where we find them.


I have run through every possible eBay item I might want and am now shopping for things for friends. Told Little B yesterday: "I bought you a couple of nightgowns. If you don't like them, we'll give them to the poor people."
"Why are you buying me nightgowns?"
"Oh . . . they were a good deal..."


Yesterday, in the shop that specializes in fitting those of us who are breast-challenged, a fortuitous introduction to an eighty-something woman twenty-six years further along in this experience. Baring of, comparing, what remains of former bosoms, sharing of stories, tears of gratitude and celebration and empathy. Sometimes just the right person appears at just the right time. Sounds dramatic, doesn't it? It was, in a minor this-is-my-world-now way.


And now it's Saturday, the forecast is for "milder with some sun" and 58*F. Today I will be able to be see and feel the sunshine, freed as I am from the week-long office captivity.  A respite from the long clawing-through-winter that has barely begun.