clouds

We've reached the time of year when it's cloudy almost every day. As I look out my office window this morning, there's gray asphalt and gray sky and even gray-ish barren trees. Once snow falls and then gets old, freezing and re-freezing with dust and dirt and salt inside, it'll be gray ground and gray sky for pretty much all of the foreseeable future.

To say that clouds are not my favorite type of sky-adornment would be an understatement. I love the sun (though it does not love me, thanks to my ridiculously fair skin), I love blue sky, I love to see stars at night and vibrant color in the daytime. But here in the midwest, the blue sky and stars hide behind the clouds for months at a time.

It's not even so much the cold of winter that I find problematic -- though I don't prefer cold! -- it's the drabness. The gray everywhere. But on the other hand, blue skies in winter mean colder days (because the cloud cover does trap the heat a little), so that's a double edged sword. It makes it hard to hate clouds when they keep it slightly warmer, and when they do all their important water recycling work. But still...it's the beginning of the cloudy season, and I miss the sun already.