Quick change artist

When I woke I felt languorous and relaxed. I recognize the feeling; it's the one I always get when I can relax and really sleep because the pending low pressure has broken and the weather has changed. My body knew what my eyes were unfogged enough to see: it was raining. There is no more beautiful sound -- to me -- than the sound of a slow, relentless rain. The only thing that would make it better here is if the roof were tin.

I climbed back into bed with my laptop to watch the rain out the bedroom window and suddenly it changed. It wasn't raining any more. It was snowing. Great wet clumps of snow are falling like an impossible curtain of snow. The wind isn't blowing so the snow is falling straight down, so heavy with the weight of water than it shoots down to the ground like arrows or spears, piling up on the ground with a speed I haven't seen all winter. And it is beautiful. This is what I've waited for and the reason I've been so congested.

My sinuses are sensitive to barometric pressure and much more accurate than weathermen and it's been that way since I moved to Colorado. But what a beautiful sight as the clumps get bigger and bigger, falling heavily to the ground like a Hollywood effect. Edward is working furiously with his scissor hands.

Before a storm like this breaks, I am cranky and lethargic and tense, my mood matching the pent up energy of the coming storm. Most people won't pick that up because outwardly I seem the same. I don't impose my mood on other people. There's no need for them to feel as badly as I do. But I do get quiet and more introspective and my nesting instinct is strong, or maybe it's just that antsy feeling that overtakes me so that I can't sit still for long. I fidget and pace and fiddle, unable to settle to any one task for long, doing things in spurts. Today is different. Today I feel like baking bread.

A snowy day like this calls for homemade bread and muffins, a celebration of life, an expression of happiness. For me, that's working with my hands and filling the cottage with smells of home and hearth and contentment. There's nothing like fresh baked bread dripping with butter and honey and a pot of chamomile or jasmine tea to turn a humdrum day into a satisfying afternoon. This is a day to curl up on the sofa or chaise and open the blinds to watch the snow fall and cover everything in silence, softening the rough and sharp edges of the outside world with an ermine mantle of glistening crystals that will become a field of flashing fiery brilliance when the sun breaks through the clouds.

Nature is the ultimate quick change artists, a mischievous sprightly elemental with a sense of the dramatic and this morning there was nothing more dramatic than watching the rain turn to snow and the dun pre-spring world into a white shrouded faery land.