seasons

surprise, surprise...it's snowing again here. honestly, i'm getting sort of tired of it. this winter has been hard on me physically. although i love the picturesque beauty of freshly fallen snow, i've always had a tough time in winter. my joints and muscles hurt more and, if i didn't think it was possible, i'm even more rundown than ever in winter. the groundhog was right--six more weeks of winter. now, make that three more to go. maybe i'm not the only one. a lot of people have written in their diaries about how february is a tough time for them. the thing is, i should probably feel lucky it's not S.A.D. or anything like that for me. i did a paper on seasonal affective disorder in grad school, and the research on it was so interesting b/c it delved into a really neat area known as chronobiology--why certain things are more likely to happen to our bodies at certain times of the day/month/year.

did you know that allergies for women are worse right before or during menstrual periods? heart attacks are likely to occur on mondays between 8 and 10am? do you know that in women, autoimmune illnesses tend to flare up more when you're premenstrual? (talk about first-hand knowledge)! also, binge eating and bulimia are worse during winter, and are probably related to serotonin, carbohydrate loading, and associated with seasonal affective disorder and our primal need to hibernate and load up on energy stores? interestingly, suicides peak in may and october for people who are bipolar. very very fascinating stuff. and i'm not surprised.

while i was interning, it seemed that students had more problems during winter months. february was a bad month, with both depressed and ED students flying through our office during walk-in hours. of course, it could also be the stress of the academic year. and certainly not all of the trends i saw in the office were related to biology. for instance, if you work w/ a college student population in a counseling context, there is the saying that october is "hometown honey break-up month". so many freshmen and 1st year students come through the office distraught over breakups in october, usually from their 1st boyfriend/girlfriend, and usually after what turn out to be (empty promises) to stay together forever.

in some ways i wouldn't mind getting back to working w/ a college student population at some point, but i'm still undecided about which direction to go for sure....

anyway....i might send along some unedited pictures to everyone. but i'm undecided, because there's one or two very major things holding me back. so we'll see. as far as marking out my face, i had to because in one photo, i was sort of trashed. in fact, very much so. besides, sometimes, believe it or not, i get shy. i'm basically extraverted but as much as i hate to say this and *really* hate for other people who don't know me very well to categorize me as "shy", i *am* shy in some situations. and that's what i think is the case at the moment....

well, more as it happens...