Warmer

Hooray February! January always seems so long, monotonous, and cold. It’s been a struggle, but we made it through!

A few days ago it briefly warmed up. The snow melted enough that I could see some of our lawn. This was followed by approximately a foot of snow over the course of two days. Added to the snow that was left from before…everything was covered. Jarom is really consistent about clearing the walk and driveway before he leaves for work (right now he carpools so that I still have a car), but it snowed so much after he left on Wednesday that I had a lot of shoveling to do when I wanted to go up to campus. It was the first out-of-the-house thing I’d done in quite a while, so of course it was snowing desperately. Of course the kids had misplaced their snow boots and ended up with canvas shoes. Of course they jumped in every huge pile of slush we encountered on our long walk around BYU.

Fortunately we also had things to go do yesterday, when the weather was in the high 30s. I never would have fathomed that this could feel warm, but I skipped a coat and just wore a cardigan. The snow was melting, the driveway cleared itself, it was sunny and pleasant (if not beautiful. Utah in partly-melted snow is truly ugly). I figured this meant that as soon as we’d enjoyed a day or two of tempting sunshine, another foot or snow would fall.

But it looks like we just get warm (well . . . relatively warm) days for almost a week! February is definitely better than January, if you ask me.

What’s the weather like where you are? What do you consider “cold” and “warm” temperatures?

Focus

I’ve noticed that my interest in any given activity comes in waves. A lot of the time, I just want to read. I devour books. But I gradually get bored with what I’m reading, or lose momentum after finishing a great book. Then I complain of boredom for a few days (or a week . . . or two).

On to a new interest! When I haven’t sketched for a while, I have to force myself to do it. But suddenly it becomes my favorite thing to do and I stay up much later than I ought to perfecting ideas and coming up with new ones. Every once in a while, cleaning is the thing that I want to do most (I can’t emphasize how infrequent this is), and I get really involved in it. Usually I stay up all night getting the kitchen spotless and the living room lovingly tidied. Then, of course, I’m completely burned out on cleaning, which is just one reason why that urge comes so rarely.

Do you have a steady hobby, or do you find your focus changes, like mine does?