Let the Sun Shine In

Today is a sunny day and, even though it is still cold, my mood has improved by a significant amount. We had a stretch of grey days and that is really what wears on you during winter. I actually don’t mind snowy days – assuming I have nowhere to go and can just sit at home and watch the snow come down. It is days with permanent overcast that are the toughest. All around you is nothing but white, black, brown and grey.

Probably part of the reason I love having the bluebirds around. With the cardinals, they bring needed splashes of color to a gloomy landscape. But nothing beats the sun and some blue sky. Besides, it makes things feel warmer than they really are.

Hard to believe but this is mid-January. And now three full weeks past the solstice. We are approaching the turning point when average temperatures start to rise again. Of course, averages don’t really mean that much since you can still be far from average.

This store near us sends out coupons all through the year. Smart of them because we never go to that store unless we have a coupon and unless it is the 30% off the total bill. Well they are sneaky because certain brands (all the big names) are never part of the sale but that it is fine print on the signage in the store. Took me a few trips to figure that out.

They are full on into spring. All of the winter clothing is jammed together on racks with signs saying up to 70% off. A real chance to score some bargains. Except that the racks and shelves are so disorganized that you almost have to go piece by piece to find something your size. For me, it is easy to just to a quick look, see that most of the stuff is ugly and then not go diving for discounts.

My wife has different ideas and can’t pass up the opportunity to score a great deal. This means she will take significantly longer to shop leaving me with nothing to do but walk up and down aisles of things I have no intention of buying. The only good part to this is she did want to buy some new rugs and I had passed that section so I knew where to go. I like the stores that know we shop differently and put some strategically places comfortable chairs where you can wait. This place just had the benches in the shoe section which I could use because nobody else was looking for shoes. Guess they didn’t have any 70% off on shoes so it wasn’t worth the time.

But she got her haul and we got some rugs I didn’t know we needed and fortunately it was only a couple of hours of my day.