Phenomenon

Tell me if this happens to you.

You get violently ill at 1:30 a.m. After that you sleep for only six hours, and you wake up feeling like cleaning. Not the bathroom, but the living room, as if the proverbial mother-in-law has just announced she'll be here in two days. But you don't have a mother-in-law, you just have a lot of clutter to deal with. You have 38 library books due on various days, can't see through the windows clearly, and have the urge to rearrange your pretty things and get rid of all the things that don't bring you up.

You are easily distracted, but not as bad as you were 10 years ago, so you realize you've grown. In a good way. For a change. The Windex does wonders for the windows. Guess that's its purpose. The sky is a vivid blue. Azure. "Azure cleaning the windows," you wonder if there's a scientific reason the sky is bluer, or if it's just that the golden trees against it makes such a brilliant contrast. At any rate, you find you love the word blue as much as the color.

And yet, the blue feelings, though slightly less vivid than they were yesterday, are still with you.

It happens every year at this time. I find myself realizing I have so many blessings, yet I feel blue, and I don't want to celebrate anything. As cathartic as it is to give thanks, it doesn't mean you don't still feel a little sick.