Overcast
Gray days affect me. I try to pretend, and go about my day as if they don’t…but they do. These kinds of days feel oppressive. Once the sky opens up and heavy rain falls, I feel better. It is almost as if it is the waiting. Waiting for the weather to do one thing or another. But for now, it is just gray and hovering. I usually find that my mind is trying to assign another reason for my melancholy. Even when my husband suggests the sky as the culprit, I grimace and recoil and wonder out loud how he can be so flippant. To try and combat this feeling, I force myself outside to run errands, “because it will be raining later.” Is that logic, or hope? Getting things done, checking things off my list is supposed to help…and it does, but only a little. Little things seems to vex me on days like this. My car alarm goes off while I am getting out of the car. On other days I can shrug it off and treat it just like any other moment in my day, but today I am flustered. Standing at the checkout of the little grocery stop, something clearly drops to the floor as I am digging through my purse. It makes a distinct sound as it bounces off the yellowing linoleum floor. Even the lady ringing up my groceries hears it, and suddenly engages me with a tiny smile when before she was rather stoic. We both look around, nothing to be seen. Something fell, something I came in with will be left behind, and that makes her giggle. What was it? I am not sure. But the moment causes an unease that I will probably carry with me for the rest of the day. That is until I realize what I have lost, or perhaps I will never know. Unease continues even as I write this. Talk radio is supposed to help, but the noise is not comforting. Why don’t I get up and turn it off? Because it is a gray day and I am equally still deciding. One small moment brings a quirky thought. As I am putting away the organic fat free milk (for my daughter), frozen Brussels sprouts (for my husband), and sugar free hazelnut creamer (for me)…I am suddenly aware that, while standing in my kitchen and lifting these few essentials out of a paper bag, I feel like I am in a movie. Here is a scene played out over and over in fictional recreations of real life. The quaint paper bag, the lonely girl in the kitchen, a friendly dog sleeping on the floor, on an overcast day. Usually it is a scene that is used as a familiar pause before something interesting happens. I am strangely comforted every time I watch these scenes. A prelude, or an interlude, or an exhale between life changing moments. Or maybe that is just a romantic notion to distract me from the thing that I lost.
sometimesihatemycat 
The sky has opened up, and I am feeling relieved…much like the clouds.