Hello! It’s still winter. And this has been quite a wintry winter. Last winter, it was really mild, and we didn’t have much snow at all. This year, though, it has snowed a million times, including last night. It’s still snowing today.
Granted, we haven’t gotten a lot of accumulation (knock on wood), but the fact that it’s snowed so many times means it’s freezing outside, and that SUCKS. Right now, my hands are the extra special kind of cold they get, and I absolutely hate it.
Oh yeah, speaking of cold hands: I was wondering why my hands have been so much colder the last couple years than before. I figured it was because I moved from mild Beaufort, S.C., to not-so-mild Bristol. Well, it turns out that ice-cold hands are a side effect of the blood pressure medication I take. So, that, combined with the fact that my hands already got ice cold before I started taking that medicine, explains why my hands feel like the icy claws of death.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I played an online claw machine and won a bunch of stuff. It is all slowly getting here, and yesterday I got this crazy adorable stuffed bee:
Isn’t it adorable? It has a teeny tiny stinger as well. I was trying to take a cute photo to share, and I ended up taking this unsettling nightmare:
I also ordered a T-shirt in the mail. I rather enjoy the comic Strange Planet. I think it’s super creative and funny comic. Here is its Instagram, if you’d like to check it out. Anyway, there was one comic strip that really got me. It was this one:
When I read “Wildly unprepared for the day,” my first thought was that I absolutely wanted that on a T-shirt. And I found it!
So, onto the title of this blog post: Boy, have I got those winter blues. It’s just so difficult to do anything when I’m this cold. I can’t feel my hands half the time, and I hurt from the cold. I haven’t been as active as I want to be because IT’S SO COLD.
I hate admitting that, because it makes me feel like an exercise failure. But I know I can’t help being cold. It’s just very frustrating.
Not only has it been cold, but it’s also been very gloomy. I can usually find motivation when it is at least sunny outside, but it hasn’t even really been that. Sure, there have been days with sun, but just not that many this winter.
I did find motivation yesterday, when the temps were in the 60s and it was sunny. I was able to do some spring cleaning, and that was great! But now, here it is, snowing and freezing cold today.
To sum up: I just want it to be warm again. I want to be able to go outside and ride my bike or go for a jog. I have been exercising inside, but when I can’t feel my hands, I just can’t exercise. I can’t grip anything well.
I absolutely do not want to change blood pressure medications, by the way. Aside from this side effect, the medicine has been amazing. It did the main thing it’s supposed to do: Lower my blood pressure. But it’s also an anti-anxiety medication, and I don’t have panic attacks nearly as much as I used to. I used to have them several times a week sometimes, and now it’s maybe once a month.
I’m still enjoying my job, by the way. In fact, I am absolutely loving it. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but one of the most fascinating things about it is that since I’m designing newspapers in Idaho, Wisconsin and Washington state, I get to see a glimpse of those areas.
And while I knew they got a lot of snow there, and that it’s way colder than here, I’ve never really thought anything more of those areas than that. Well, these places have snow sculpting contests, snowmobile races, skiing events, ice skating, hockey, ice fishing, a type of skiing without poles, snowshoe races and pretty much any kind of event you can think of involving snow or ice.
It is like a whole different world in those areas. It’s really cool to design these papers because I get to see what makes each town famous. If I design one paper in one area, I get to learn the history and such of just that area. But I work on six different newspapers in three states, and I’ve read about a ton of cool stuff.
The one paper I do in Idaho is in the Potato Capital of the World. Another paper is in the Teton Valley, which has this gem of a location: http://recreation.tetoncountyidaho.gov/marys-nipple-trail. Another paper had this cool story about Hank Aaron getting his start there: https://www.weau.com/2021/01/23/remembering-henry-aaron-hammerin-hank-left-lasting-legacy-in-eau-claire/.
So, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun working at this job.
Well, I’m going to go put my hands under the electric blanket. Until next time!
Frazzled Daisy 