CC Outtake: A Dark, Dull and Dreary Parking Lot (and Winter)

This apartment parking lot rather sums up our PNW winter as well as these cars: dark, dull, wet, dreary, and a dose of depressing. Yes, it’s actually been the kind of winter here in the Pacific Northwest that it’s often stereotyped to be but usually isn’t really: perpetually cloudy, rainy, and…dreary. I could count the sunny days since the beginning of December on my hands. Seriously.

And it still hasn’t let up. Ok, California’s gain is our perpetually sogginess.  So we all find our coping techniques.

Like drive brightly-colored cars. Self-medicate. Or…

 

This has been mine. The skiing has been stellar, and the sun came out a lot more up here above the low clouds up high in the Cascades, one hour east of Eugene on Willamette Pass. Which I had to document in a rare selfie (my apologies) to send to Stephanie, who was down in the clouds .

And now I’ve digressed considerably. But back in Eugene (“Skinner’s Mudhole”), scenes like this parking lot sum up why a psychologist friend told me that depression cases are way up this winter; well that and politics. My therapy for both is to head for the hills. I typically leave home a bit after noon, arrive at about 1:30, and buy a 2 hour pass ($14/hr) which actually gets me right through to the 4PM closing time. Plenty of skiing for an old man like me. And at $28, it’s cheaper (and more effective) than talk therapy (or meds), although I can’t say that from experience, having never found the need (yet).

Oh, and theses cars. Pretty typical. What else is there to say?