It's Been Gloomy

It has been challenging to write this blog lately. I am experiencing a shortage of inspiration and a lack of interesting stuff to write about. Not much has been happening around here that is humorous, odd or worthy of discussion. The fact is that things have been downright humdrum and boring recently. Maybe I’m beginning to get used to this place.

I have been lacking a certain joie de la vie recently, and I attribute that to a number of things.  The weather certainly isn’t helping. All is not sunny in North Georgia these days, and I mean that literally. I don’t think we’ve had an honest sunny day for the past month. The clouds rolled in at the end of November, and it’s been overcast, damp and chilly ever since.

I imagine that the weather here lately is a lot like the weather in countries with names like Slobovia and Dampistan that are located somewhere in Eastern European. Though I’ve never been to the region, and I’m not sure exactly what the weather is really like there, I picture these as being damp, cold and bleak places where the sun rarely shines and the main crops are cabbage, mold and moss. In my imagination these are places populated by rudely dressed peasants who raise goats, live in rough stone huts and eat turnip porridge while huddled around a smoky, sputtering fireplace. These are countries where the national flower is the potato, the national bird is a vulture, and the national anthem goes something like this: “Life is shit. Hail Crapavia.”

I was not expecting weather like this. It may have been cold bad last winter, but I do not remember it being as overcast and dreary. It’s not the cold that’s gets to me; it’s the absence of sunlight. As a former Floridian, I’m used to seeing the sun on a daily basis. I feel like I’m turning into lichen. I’m sure the weather has been great for mushrooms, liverworts and troglodytes, but it's not so great for human beings.

The constant gloom is not helping my outlook on life, and it certainly has dampened my creative spark. Instead of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, I feel like Igor of PMS Acres. It’s hard to be uplifting and humorous in weather like this. I bet there aren’t many comedy clubs in Slobovia or Crapistan. (How many serfs does it take to screw in a light bulb? Oh, that’s right, we don’t have electricity.) The bottom line is that if we don’t get some sunshine around here soon, these posts may get downright depressing.

Which leads me to my next subject. I like words. Whenever I come across a new one, I try to use it in my daily vocabulary. Why use a five cent word when a twenty-five cent word will do? However, I recently came across a word that I cannot imagine I will ever have a chance to use in daily speech. The word is alphitomancy, and it means the use of barley meal as a means of divination.

This got me wondering what sort of people believed that you could foretell the future by sifting through barley meal? For that matter, who eats barley meal? Whoever they were, I have to believe they were an insignificant people who left little mark upon history. The Romans sought omens in the entrails of slaughtered animals, the Greeks consulted scantily clad women at oracles (at least that’s the Hollywood version of what oracle priestesses looked like), and the Vikings threw bones to foresee the future. Compared to these, trying to divine the future by looking for omens in a pile of barley meal seems pretty mundane and anticlimactic. I know that I would be disappointed if I got all worked up over what the future would hold only to find that my soothsayer’s prediction was based on barley meal.

Then it occurred to me that they probably eat barley meal gruel in places like Slobovia and Crapistan; thus, I would not be surprised if they practiced alphitomancy in those places also. Somehow that seems perfect considering how the weather has been around here lately.

I have some questions about what the future holds for me. At the top of the list is weather the sun will ever return. I don’t have any barley meal to consult, but I wonder if a package of instant oatmeal will suffice?

This is my last post before Christmas, and I bet you’re glad about that. So I will end this post with a heartfelt wish that you will have a merry and joyous Christmas:

By now in New York City, there's snow on the ground
And out in California, the sunshine's falling down.
And, maybe down in Memphis, Graceland's all in lights
And in Atlanta, Georgia, there's peace on earth tonight.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines.

Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

It's windy in Chicago, the kids are out of school.
There's magic in Motown, the city's on the move.
In Jackson, Mississippi, to Charlotte, Caroline
And all across the nation, it's the peaceful Christmas time.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines
Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

And from Mineral Bluff in Georgia 

God bless y'all, we love ya.
Happy New Year, good night,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas tonight.