...

I miss the turning of seasons. It seems stagnant here, as though time drags, perhaps stops, nothing to differentiate my days. There are no mornings of waking to rain and gray skies, and no chance of those magical moments where you wake up to falling snow. I used to love those mornings. They didn't happen often, at Southern, but when they did come it was the best feeling. So much promise in waking up and realizing, from the glow or slant of light or perhaps just a sense of difference that something good had happened--and then getting to dash into Bec's room, jump on her bed, and wake her up. It was the only circumstance in which I could ever get away with something like that. -grins- it's hard to be angry when you're running around the Village in pajamas and rain boots, throwing snow and laughing with people you never usually talk to.

That doesn't happen here. There are no trees that I see change from day to day--oh, I miss maple trees. That smoke-blackened bark, and the sheer brilliance of the yellow and orange against it. The closest thing here, I suppose, is the tangerine tree out back, just barely starting to lighten the solid green of the fruit. But even that is almost imperceptibly slow.