Easy Street

     These are the easy days, right?  Sun is finally shining, you walked out of the house without that extra puffy coat on this morning, you didn't have to bundle the baby, you took a walk outside, you didn't have to heat up your car in the morning.  It's easy to look upward or inward and feel gratitude with each breath of fresh almost-spring air.  It's easy to remind myself that life is good with the windows open and my favorite tunes cranking.
     What a change!  Just last week I could.not.bear.one.more.day.of.winter. Nothing's changed except I now have a book on tape to enrich the looong hours of driving.  Same house, same family, same job, car, circumstances, empty bank account.  Something about the beauty of the weather day lifted the dark funk that settled over me during the winter.
     Why does the weather alone have that effect, and how can I bottle that up for the rest of the year?  How do you put a "spring" in your step even while being housebound for weeks?  Do you think the great spiritual leaders had the same fluctuations in their deep joy of living based on things like weather?  I know it's small talk, "How 'bout this weather we're having?"  It's small talk because it's that important to us!
     I do know that it makes breathing and coming into alignment with my breath more automatic - except when I'm next to my daughter's stinky feet after a day at school.  ICK.