sunshine is gold, and it warms my soul

i am not one to complain too often about the weather. most of the time it is what it is, and i welcome the varying degrees of warmth, cold, sun, rain, snow, etc. however, this last month has been ridiculous. sure there have been the occasional hours (notice i said hours, not days) where the sky has opened up, blue patches have appeared and the sun has come shining through, but for the most part i, along with everyone else in new brunswick (and dare i say the whole east coast) have been living under a frequently leaking ceiling of grey. it feels like winter in vancouver bc.

one of the things that drew me to stay in the east coast, despite the bitter cold winters that freeze your nose hairs, was the sunshine. in my second year of university i noticed that the winter blues were not getting me down as much as they had in the past. i had more energy and, despite the looming papers, economic poverty, and other dramatic life bits, i was happier than i normally am during the winter months. i continued to reflect on this and realized it had something to do with the sunshine. it can be minus twenty degrees and really windy, but the sky will be blue and the winter sunshine is blazing beautifully!

i love my home city of vancouver bc. the beauty is breathtaking, especially in the spring and summer times when everything is so green and lush with life. there is the beach and the mountains all within a short drive and beautiful farmlands that stretch east when you drive out towards the suburbs. new architecture juxtaposed with the old, quaint little urban communities bustling with life, and beautiful flowering parks scattered throughout the brick and cement give the city character and wonderful charm. and, that one can never be without a good cup of coffee for there is a shoppe on just about every corner, which makes this city very appealing. however, when compared to the east coast there is an overall lack of sunshine in vancouver and that is a deal breaker. sunshine is gold and it warms my soul. i would trade walking through the city with a good cup of coffee, which is one of my absolute favourite things to do, for a small snow covered town with perpetual winter sunshine any day!

i am hoping that today's break in the clouds is the beginning of the end of perpetual greyness in new brunswick. i am not sure i can take many more days without a healthy dose of the sun's warming rays. i may have to invest in one of those lamps that mimics the sun just so i can get out of bed in the morning and face the day. do these lamps come with timers that will automatically turn them? perhaps i can set it outside my bedroom window to turn on around the same time the sunshine would normally begin to stream in...

love & sunshine,
shannon-may