Reflections On Non-Finishing

The Pacific Northwest in northern California has been our home for about six years now. Most of my life was spent in southern California, San Diego. And beyond the difference of a few million people versus a county population of a smidgen over one hundred thousand, there is one major issue that flings itself out at me every chance it can get: The sunlight up here can not speak in full, coherent, complete sentences. It is a treacherous tease, a scandalous skaleewagon, and a pernicious player. It is a burnt out cookie with looks but no flavor.

You know what I am talking about, you cruel taunting sunlight you. Pouring warmth through the window, you coerce me into the utterly false belief that the northwest can be warm in the month of January. When I stand at the sliding glass door leading into the backyard, your beams melt into my shoulders and caress my face.

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world (as sung by the wonder himself, Louis Armstrong).

Before I can stop them with their tomfoolery, my legs prance into the backyard with gleeful expectation of weather satisfaction. Only to be slapped in the face with a chilling embrace of forty degree Fahrenheit weather. It is not a pretty sight. Were it not for the muddy ground left from yesterday's storm, I would collapse right there in the dirt.

Once again, the sunlight has not finished it's job. If you are going to travel all of the millions of miles from the sun to the earth, then do your duty. Report here at sixty degrees, eighty, or somewhere in-between.

As my blog statistics have informed me, there are people reading this from Alaska. So you know what I am talking about. A big, bad, show-off, bloated ego sun sends us little farts of inferior sunbeams. With all your power and might, huge orange/yellow ball in the sky, mail us something useful. Something that will actually feel good from my skin to my bones. The stuff you have been throwing at us is not worthy of your might. It is an insult to our sensitive, deserving skin.

Because you have been ineffective in your job, oh sun, I have been forced to rely on a space heater. Located two inches from my legs, it is making up for your ineptitude. But I have to pay for it's services! Sunlight is free. And I have paid for my right to be a warmed Earthling. You are not living up to your end of the bargain.

I am going to initiate a petition to the sun, insisting it do it's proper duty. Who will be the first to sign? Probably my friends in Alaska. The ones who realize that forty degrees above zero is much the same as forty below.

Heather Leigh,
Cold Weather Activist