Happy Washington Thoughts

I never thought I'd be writing a post called "Happy Washington Thoughts" but alas...I am.

Yesterday I realized that I have successfully survived my second Washington winter! Ok...granted winter isn't technically over yet, and the temperatures up here right now are far from being typical winter weather, but as I learned last winter, it has nothing to do with the temperature. Its the light, or I should probably say, the lack of light. I'm still a little bit amazed when I look at a map and I see just how far north Washington state is. The one thing I never expected when I moved out here was the lack of sunlight in the winter time. I had always heard about Alaska having all day sunlight in the summer and all day darkness in the winter, but I never heard anyone say that Washington was lacking sunlight in winter too. If anything, I just thought that the lack of sunlight was due to the constant rain and fog and gray skies. Boy was I mistaken about that! 18 hours of light in the summer, followed by 6 hours of dark was wonderful! Of course, that reverses in the winter time and last winter was miserable. By 3:30pm, it felt like 8pm. The sun never actually rose to the center of the sky. Instead it just sort of hovered around on the horizon and then disappeared early in the day. I started thinking that the people who jump off the Deception Pass Bridge really aren't all that crazy. Last winter was depressing and I was thankful that Mr. V would be deploying during the summer so I wouldn't have to spend my second winter here alone and depressed. However, every person that I ran into last winter assured me over and over, that for everyone, the first winter was the hardest and if you can make it through the first, then the following winters would never be as bad. Honestly? I thought that was a load of crap! I was dreading my second winter here like you wouldn't believe.

Yesterday I went to help out a friend and watch her little boy for about an hour. As I was leaving her house and driving back towards mine I was looking at the sunset. My first thought was that the sky had cleared up and it was a pretty sunset. Then I looked at the clock in my car and saw that it was 5:02 pm. I guess that's when it hit me. It was after 5pm and it was still light outside! I know that we already passed by the shortest day of the year, so logically I know that means that the days will start getting longer again, but I didn't really notice that until last night. I guess it hit me then that I made it through my second winter, and people were right (and I really hate admitting that!), I DID make it through the second winter with no problems, which means that I can now vouch for it and tell people new to this area that the first winter really is the hardest.

This probably all sounds like something minor but if anyone remembers me last winter, I was miserable, absolutely miserable, and I wanted to shoot every single person who cheerfully said to me "Don't worry. The first winter is always the hardest!"

Now does this mean that I have learned to love Washington as much as Mr. V does? Nope. But it does mean that this summer, when I wake up at 4am because there is sunlight streaming in through my windows, I won't complain about it! I may have dealt with the darkness better this year, but that doesn't mean I want it like that forever. Last summer I hated the early morning sunlight. This year I think I'll finally invest in blackout curtains and enjoy the long days while they last. It also means that if all goes as planned I should only live through one more winter up here, at least until the Navy decides to move us back here again. I guess I have to admit that while this is still not my favorite place to be, I adapted to life up here much better than I ever expected to :-).

Cattitude

As usual life with a house full of cats is always entertaining. Two days ago I reached the conclusion that the cats are determined to drive me out of my mind. One of the "joys" about living in the Pacific Northwest is that most houses don't come with air conditioners. When I questioned people about this I was told that the weather rarely gets hot enough to need an air conditioner. So far I have yet to see this logic. When we moved here last August it was hot enough for air conditioning for almost the entire month. Being from New Jersey, having the summer end in August is normal to me, but I thought that it was just a fluke...because thats what the locals said. Fast forward to the past 2 weeks. Its June and temperatures have gotten up to 80 degrees with lots of sunlight and lots of humidity. For my husband, who is from Louisiana, thats not hot. For me, thats hot and definitely air conditioning weather. But of course, we don't have an air conditioner. We have windows, screen doors and ceiling fans.

When the heat started getting to be a little too much for me to handle, I did what any logical person would do. I opened the front door so only the screen door was closed. I opened our back sliding glass door an left the sliding screen door closed. Then I opened all the windows.

Last year I learned that one of my cats is capable of opening our sliding screen door. I had a friend over the day I opened everything and both of us paid very close attention to the cats and to every open door and window. I should have realized right away that you can never pay enough attention to these cats.

My friend and I went out to buy ice cream. Before we left I said that we had to close everything up so the cats wouldn't get out. Too late. My friend walked into the kitchen and realized that the screen door was open. How long had it been open? We had no idea. We rushed outside to find 4 of the cats wandering around my backyard and one of them strolling along the top of the fence. I was slightly panicked, but thankfully they must not completely hate me because they raced back into the house pretty quickly when they saw me. The one on the fence, Marmalade was a little harder to get, but overall it was an easy fix to the breakout. The bigger problem was when we got back in the house. We had to count the cats because we weren't sure if any had run away from the yard. We counted 9...then searched and searched for the 10th one. We did eventually find him...sleeping in the far corner of the closet.

The next day, I thought I was being smart. I opened the windows, but kept the screen door closed. Well...not so smart. After cleaning the house all day in the heat and humidity, I felt gross and went to take a shower. Thank God that I had no towels in the bathroom. If I did, I would have lost more cats. I walked out of the bathroom to get some towels and through the open window in my bedroom I heard a little voice say "Heeeyyy kitty! Where did you come from?" I had a moment of stupidity where I thought "He can't possibly be talking about MY cat!" Then the little voice spoke again, "Mommy look! A kitty cat! Where did you come from kitty? Ohhhhh the window!" That got my attention. I raced to the bedroom window and what did I see? Marmalade was strolling along the top of the fence again. The little kid next door had climbed up on his side of the fence and was talking to him. I guess when the kid got to the top of the fence he was able to look into my yard and see the window that had a screen popped out of it. I am thankful this kid had a loud voice and that I heard him at just the right time!

I raced outside again to get Marmalade off the fence. This time he didn't come back as easily. He hopped over the fence, into my front yard (at least it wasn't the neighbors yard). So I ran back into the house to meet him out front. As I ran back in the house, I noticed that another one of my cats, Oreo was wandering around the other side of my backyard. I got to the front of the house and saw Marmalade. He also saw me, and then hopped back over the fence to the backyard. I ran through the house again. (The lock on our gate is really hard to open so it was faster to run through the house.) I managed to grab him from the backyard this time, usher Oreo back into the house at the same time and push Sheena back into the window (she had started to climb out the window at this point), all at the same time. Once inside, I closed the window. Then I closed every other window. The windows stayed closed all day yesterday even though it was still hot out.

Today I woke up to clouds and cooler weather and I have never been happier to not have sun in Washington! Mr,. V received a very prompt email from me telling him that I need to buy some type of air conditioner because monitoring the windows 24/7 is simply not going to work for me.