The Winter of My Discontent....

... well not really. But, I'm VERY ready for Spring. It's been interesting time this move of mine right smack dab in the middle of winter and which I also see as a personal winter of sorts. Leaving my friends and way of life behind me I headed to the middle of the country for new opportunities on many levels- with career, with art which I hope someday becomes my next career and with family. Great choices, great reasons and certainly no regrets. But around 3 pm on these cold days, I wonder... Where my days were once filled with phone calls and driving (oi vay - the driving) and meeting friends, going here, hurrying there, now my days are far less hectic, with fewer calls and people. There is a slowness, a silence, a state of just being wrapped up in a warm quilt watching the snow and the drab gray of winter - wondering when will this hibernation end. I realized I've not really spent any length of time in "hibernation" and though I'm not accustomed to it and feel a bit uncomfortable, I know it is for my good.
What you don't see in this picture is what I read into it. What I love about it. BabyKitty, who started her life with me in Texas, then California and now Missouri, looks out the window at this great big pine. She watches a squirrel that lives there and I'm sure takes a great deal of pleasure of taunting Baby while he sits on the iron railing eating a nut. There are also all kinds of birds that jump from limb to limb and she watches them too -- utterly fascinated. She enjoys this morning ritual of gulping down her food and sitting in the window. I'm pretty sure she doesn't even think twice about her old life in California and how warm it was or if the birds were more interesting. She's happy now. NOW is what she has and only knows and she found a window to enjoy it. Granted I know she's just a cat, a pretty smart one I might add (because she can fetch), but she doesn't have the ability to regret, doubt or lament. Somehow I think if she did have that capability, she wouldn't waste her time wondering about the past, her choices or even wishing for spring, I think she would say, "Come look out the window and see all those birds!"