Yup, It's November Again

It's relentless outside as I write this, a constant deluge of rain, clouds have descended into the tree tops and the sound of life outside is drowned out by the rush of water all around me. My apartment has many windows and skylights and the effect today is one of living in a glass globe placed under a waterfall. Cascading is the only word that comes to mind.

I had been searching for some blogging inspiration by going through my previous posts, looking at things I had started and not finished and there it was - a post about November, started last November  the 23rd. Today is the 21st of the month and my mood is the same as it was then. Dark and damp. And the forecast for the next seven days is less daylight, more rain. The Vancouver Sun today tells me that the rainfall to date this month is 63 mm or 2.48 inches more than the normal totals. It has been raining a lot.

My father hated November and after he retired, he and my mom often planned a holiday somewhere warmer and drier for this month. I didn't understand it then.  November for me was just a break between a gorgeous, golden leaf-filled October and Christmas, a time to start gift

shopping and enjoying the new tv season. What was the problem?  February had always been my problem month. Cold, bleak and devoid of highlights except for the manufactured silliness of Valentine's Day. But now, I am starting to see my dad's point of view. November sucks.

Is November weather getting worse or is it just me?  I have always been sensitive to the cold, that is nothing new so my home is warm and I keep wool cardigans and throws handy and sheepskin slippers on my feet. The hall closet is filled, almost embarrassingly so with down coats, scarves, gloves and boots. I am prepared for the outdoors.

I just don't want to go out there. I suffer from SAD, Seasonal Affected Disorder, but I'm venturing a guess that most of us that live here feel a touch of the winter blues. For me it manifests as a desire to drink coffee and/or wine, eat carbs and chocolate and stay in bed as long as I can in the morning. My brain turns foggy and my memory is poor. At the end of the day I can't remember what I was supposed to have accomplished with the previous hours. Whatever it was probably didn't get done if it wasn't written down. I use a light therapy box in the mornings and force myself to get outside as much as I can as even a grey day offers some benefit to those suffering from SAD.  Some days it doesn't seem important enough to bundle up and brave it though, I'd rather eat another cookie and find things to do inside. I don't suffer enough to require medication I just need November to pass. It appears it's not the weather getting worse that is the problem.

December never seems to be quite as bad as November, it usually doesn't rain as much. Then, as the winter miracle approaches on December 21st, that being the solstice, not the birth of Christ, my spirit lifts every so slightly. The days start getting longer, praise the lord!  There are also the distractions of Christmas and New Year's Eve to make the days sparkle a bit as opposed to the solemness of Remembrance Day that November holds. November could be enjoyed as the start of ski season, the play-off time for football, the NHL gets into gear, and the Black Friday sales are coming ....but not for me. Here on the great wet coast of BC it's dark, it's damp and I'm pulling the blankets over my head and making cookie crumbs in the bed. Wake me up December 22nd.

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It Never Rains in Southern California

I have the great fortune to be spending some time in Palm Springs right now. And it's true, when you are here in the desert it does feel as if it never rains in Southern California as Albert Hammond tried to tell us. Although he did go on to sing that it "pours, man, it pours". And so it does some years. It has been a rainy and snowy year for California and they are about to experience the flooding that comes with the snow melt but here on the desert side of the San Jacinto mountains it feels like another world. I have included a picture of the blue sky so that those remaining in Vancouver can have a reference point.

Before you get hating on me I will let you know that I did my time in Vancouver this year. I was there for it all, the month of snow, then more snow, the unending rain in March. This was the first winter in many that I did not get an opportunity to escape to somewhere warm and sunny, warm enough to be in a bathing suit for part of the day. So I had to scrape the mould from behind my ears as I boarded the plane for California and the greenish, algae-like tint is slowly leaving my skin the more time I spend in the sun here. I feel your pain.
I am a born and bred Wet Coaster. Lived all my life in BC, most of it in the lower mainland. I know rain. My parents were born and raised in the area, rain is mixed in with my blood. I am used to it. But this winter has tried the spirit and soul of even those of us born to the wet weather.

When climate change was first discussed it was all about the idea of global warming, we would be growing lemons and oranges in our back yards, no more skiing in the snow-less mountains. Palm trees would abound, why, Vancouver was to become the new Los Angeles as Los Angeles withered up and blew away or sank into the sea.  Now the buzzwords are global climate change. Ah, that is a bit different. That leaves things open to all kinds of interpretations, expect anything! Los Angeles and Southern California were deluged with moisture this winter as were we in the Vancouver area. And still are according to reports I'm getting from friends at home. There won't be any orange groves in Vancouver surviving the snow we saw or flourishing in the few hours of tepid sunshine this spring has had to offer. Even our native gardens didn't survive the weather we had. Lawns turned to mush and then froze. Thawed and got rained on again and are now mostly moss. Trees that were never meant to carry eight inches of wet heavy snow were snapping their branches off in desperation to be free of the weight. Hedges splayed outwards, long branches escaping their tidy boundaries, requiring amputation.  In my neighbourhood the city workers were still cleaning the fall leaves off the streets in February, leaves that had been caught under the snow and ice and could finally be swept away.

Easterners laugh at our bitching and moaning and tell stories of snow so high they have to shovel out of their front door in the morning. That is precisely why I don't live in eastern Canada, or central
Canada, or northern Canada. I live as far south and almost as far west as I can get to escape Canadian weather. If Canada, instead of the U.S. had managed to strike a deal with Hawaii, or we had annexed  the Turks and Caicos like it had been discussed in 1974 then I would be living in one of those two places right now, I'm betting. I went to Hawaii for the first time at the age of eighteen and fell in love. Not with a person but with the islands. I had no idea such a paradise existed so close to home and so accesssible and I  tried to figure out how as a teenager with few skills I could wrangle a green card and stay there. It was not to be. But if I had had the Turks and Caicos to go to at eighteen....

  Don't you want to be here right now?

Courtesy of Turks and Caicos Tourism

Americans really have the choice to live in any kind of weather they want while staying in America. The U.S. has it all covered, weatherwise. Dry, wet, cold, steamy, arid, scorchingly hot. I envy them that.  The plan to make the Turks and Caicos our eleventh province was floated around again in 2013 and I'm hoping one day the Queen will give it up to us Canadians. Let us have our version of Puerto Rico or Hawaii, a tropical  dream with Canadian currency, the English language, a Caribbean flair,  and lots of room for our damp and chilled populace to to flake out on the beaches. It would be nice if it happened before global climate change melts the glaciers, raises the sea levels and sinks the Turks and Caicos. Fingers crossed.