Senseless

Let's get this out of the way first. I know we're made in God's image. Got it. That said, we don't use the sense He gave a stump.

After the latest school shooting, there was a spike in talking about how we need to talk about mental illness and not just guns. I get that. I don't think they should be mutually exclusive. Both are incredibly important.

From there, I got to thinking about Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. I thought I'd look it up, and I found this link by Googling it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002499/

Looking at the symptoms, such as increased appetite and increased sleep and social withdrawal and irritability, got me thinking. Isn't that everything that hibernating animals display? They eat and pack on the pounds, find a cozy spot to curl up away from other disturbances (like politics or football or those noisy squirrel neighbors, or the noisy squirrel neighbors who play football while discussing politics, perhaps) and sleep. For months!

Now why, I ask you, can we "intelligent" human beings not follow suit? Why in the world shouldn't those of us who have the misfortune to live in these cold climates use our noggins, grow out our hair, feast all fall, and do our long winter's nap instead of shoveling and snow blowing and delaying school and getting sick and all the other ... oh, just insert your own word here- I'm too irritable to be creative... that we deal with from November through the middle of April? This is ridiculous! I don't know anyone who LIKES wearing two pairs of pants just to stay warm in the house, much less outside. Or standing at the bus stop when the snow is coming at you sideways. Or trying to get down a slippery slope while remaining upright, though Dooce has a hilarious post about just that. See it here: http://dooce.com/2013/01/30/the-little-winter-that-could/  just make sure you have your tissues ready because you'll be laughing hard enough to cry.

Look at all the eating we do at Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then a week later, at New Year's, we resolve to lose weight? When we have three more MONTHS of winter and cold ahead of us and need that extra insulation to stay warm? We really must be nuts. Senseless.

Come to think of it, why do I have a Y membership through the winter when I get more than enough cardio from shoveling?

It's snowing again. Can you tell?