Shorter days.... longer nights...

"Winter Solstice"  Pastel  6 x 6 © Donna Gross
Available donnatheresafineart.com

We are almost there...the day when the earth returns to the light...just about the time I am adjusted to the early sunsets and early dinners, the light slowly begins it's return..
I enjoy winter... I don't live in the snow!  That's probably why! I love to visit snow ladened lands like Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada ... but to live there? Naw... no thanks. Besides I live in paradise now... but there was a time I lived in an ice cube.
During my traveling nursing days where I would live and work at an out of state hospital of my choice, I experienced enough bitterly cold winter days to remember that I was born and raised in Southern California!
I was working in St. Paul, Minnesota. Arriving in September, the weather was downright balmy. But come Halloween, the frigid air from the Great Lakes descended upon our brownstone and one morning I awoke seeing my breath!
Quick call the fire department! The boiler is on the brink... I mean Who Lives Like This!! Such a histrionic I was in my youth....
Off to work in my 1970 VW bus with NO HEAT.... the other nurses would just look at me and laugh as I bundled up for the drive home after my 3-11 pm shift donning parka with hood, snow boots ( how I drove in those I don't know...) and gloves, while those Minnesotan nurses trotted out to their Volvos, that featured  heated seats, in their slip on shoes without socks!!
I needed a different vehicle.  I needed to high tail it south... Got on the phone to my headhunter and booked an assignment to sunny San Diego where I lived and worked for 5 years.... met the hubby...and the rest is history.
Wherever you are in the world tonight, I hope you are warm and toasty!