I swear I'm going to work on my book...

...but just one more thing!

I've been dealing with some negative emotional energy the past week or so, partly because I had kind of a rough start to the new year and partly because it's been distressingly dark lately.  Not rainy, just dark, in the miserable way that winter can be.  This afternoon, though, it finally started raining.

There's something so inherently soothing about the sound of rain.  I have the window in my bedroom propped open (it's almost 60 degrees outside) and I was zoning out a few minutes ago, just listening.  For half a second, with the rain and window open, I could almost believe it was spring...

And it reminded me of that time when I was living in Ireland and deep in the middle of a horrifically cold and dreary February afternoon, I paused in my bedroom, heard a wonderfully welcome sound, and went squealing through the house, "I can hear frogs!  Spring is coming!"

And all of my housemates converged in my room, where I threw open the window and then hushed everyone and told them to "Listen!"  And we all listened.

But it wasn't frogs I was hearing. 

It was a car alarm.

Winter is terrible.