I Love the Sunshine ... I Hate the Sunshine ...

We're having my favourite winter weather - brilliant blue skies and cold temperatures.  I much prefer this to the grey, drizzly days we're known for in the Pacific North West.

There's just one trouble with all that sunshine.  It shows up all the dust and smeared windows in the house.  I'm not the best at housekeeping - my theory is that if it's tidy, it looks clean.  I'm not sure how guests view that theory but it works for me!  Don't get me wrong, our house is clean, just not really clean, if you know what I mean.  I keep saying that we need to have overnight guests about once every three months, just so the house gets the full and proper cleaning it deserves.

Ahhh, the sun.  Sunshine, sunrise, sunsets, sunburn ... good memories and bad!  That darn sunshine is showing up the fact that I apparently can't wash windows very well (nice smears on the front windows, right by the front door), and of course it's letting me know that it's been a while since I dug out the dusters and vacuum cleaner. Yes, I DO know where they are.

Now I can't wait for Spring and the bright green leaves to appear on the trees.  While the rest of the country is having horrendous weather, here on the west coat we're having a very mild winter, with slightly above average temperatures, and not enough rain.  I don't think the ski business is very happy with the lack of snow - it looks spectacular on the Olympic and Cascade mountains, but apparently there's not enough to really enjoy it.

What I don't think people here realize is that the weather moves further on from the East Coast and is hitting Ireland and the United Kingdom with high winds and torrential rain.  Seaside towns are being battered, rail lines buckled by landslides, and the fields across the country are under water.  There are towns in Somerset that are actually cut off from the rest of the world by flooding.  These photos from the UK's online Daily Mail newspaper give you an idea of what's happening - and has happened over the past few weeks.  Yikes.

Photo Courtesy Tony Carney/Apex/Daily Mail

Photo Courtesy Apex/Daily Mail

I'm not sure how we got from sunshine to cleaning to flooding, but I know there's a tenuous link there somewhere!