Winter Blahs

I meant to have a submission for this upcoming ChronicBabe Blog Carnival, not realizing I had missed the deadline on Friday. Even though I won't be able to participate in the carnival I did like the topic so I'm going to go ahead and cover it today: Getting Through The Heart Of The Winter Blahs.

I never fully realize how deep my winter blahs are until spring arrives with a jolt of energy and desires to clean and even let a little more light into my living space (temporarily). I start wanting to get out more and do more stuff. Of course spring isn't quite as energizing and inspiring as it was pre-migraines but that's a whole different topic.

Basically I don't mind any of the winter stuff until after the start of the new year. Then when the holidays are over and Spring is still a ways away there is all this time of cold and snow that just drags on. It doesn't take long to get really sick of bundling up every time you go outside, scraping and preheating your car and right about now I start getting sick of my winter wardrobe. This winter has been even tougher than usual due to the high volume of stuff in our small apartment. Here's a list of what I'm doing to keep myself in somewhat good spirits until Spring.

1. Regularly making a short list of what I'm thankful for helps me to keep things in perspective.

2. Watch great shows on TV. By having shows to regularly look forward to (or anything to regularly look forward to) helps the time to move a little faster, especially comedies - love to laugh!

3. Get out into the world. Sometimes I'll spend some time at Ikea just to get out of the house (I love Ikea), or my husband and I will go on a date - stuff like that.

4. New this year, I'm really enjoying cooking and baking great winter goodies. Everything from soups and casseroles to sweet potato pies and banana bread. Preparing food was something I had to do until my appetite started coming back. Now that I have some nausea free days, I'm really enjoying all the cooking and baking. Once it gets really hot and humid I won't want to turn the oven on as much as I am right now.

5. Allow myself some time to wallow. Inevitably there are some really hard days, migraine wise and emotionally. Suddenly none of the tricks work and I'm wallowing in my pain, or nausea, PMS. I try not to be really hard on myself during these times and just let myself feel what I'm feeling. It will pass, I will feel differently over time and that's okay. Easier said than done - I'm working on it though.

What do you do to beat the winter blahs?