Texas Insomnia & Other Woes

New Year's Day I went to bed fairly early. Which caused me to get up fairly early. As in a bit past 2 this morning. Consequently I'm feeling punch drunk, like I've been on the road, driving non-stop for 24 hours and in dire need of a motel room.

I got up, made coffee, with it being hours before the Dallas Morning New would arrive. I finished reading Hollywood Kryptonite. That's the book that makes the case that George Reeves (Superman) was murdered, rather than a suicide. The Ben Affleck movie, Hollywoodland, with he playing Reeves, is based on this book.

Superman killing himself has always bothered me and I really think that is at the root of my extreme distrust of Super Heroes. After reading Hollywood Kryptonite, I'm convinced Reeves was murdered by a hitman ordered up by his jilted girl-friend, Toni Mannix.

I called my Mom early this morning to try and persuade them that waiting a week to come here, rather than leaving this coming Sunday, might be a good idea, due to we are supposed to be getting a cold snap, starting with rain on Monday. I told Mom, the way it goes here, is a few days cold, then back warm again, that by the Sunday after next we should be back in warm times again.

Mom said it would be too much trouble to wait a week, they were already packed, they'd add more cold weather clothes. Where Mom and Dad grew up, in Whatcom County, just south of the Canadian border, they experienced many a blizzard with very cold temperatures, heavy wind and a lot of snow, blowing into big drifts that could cover barns.

No one here in Texas can understand how varied the weather in Washington is. It is so unlike here. Most here think it rains all the time up there. Where Mom and Dad grew up, in Whatcom County, was only 40 miles north of where I grew up, in Skagit County. Whatcom County was in the path of weather systems coming down Canada's Frasier River Valley. As in very cold fronts, meeting up with wet Pacific air, causing massive snowstorm.

Meanwhile, where I lived, we called it The Banana Belt, while my Grandma's were snowbound with huge drifts, we'd have no snow and not even be freezing. Just a few miles to the west of where I lived the land was in the shadow of the Olympics, meaning they were a dry zone with way less rain than those of us living near the Cascades. When the clouds hit the Cascades they'd back up and pour rain on us. But the Olympics block a large area to the west, with some areas getting desert like levels of rainfall, annually.

And then there's the other side of the mountains. You drive over one of the Cascade Passes (you can't right now, closed due to avalanche danger) and you are in a brown Texas-like, albeit it more hilly and way more irrigated, zone. Eastern Washington gets real cold. And has a lot of orchards where they grow all those apples you see in stores here. And apricots, peaches, nectarines, cherries, grapes and all sorts of good stuff.

I take it back. Eastern Washington bears little resemblance to Texas.

So, anyway, Mom and Dad know what a cold winter is like, but they've become Weather Babies, like me. We all shivered in my sister's Iceberg she calls a house, in Tacoma, last summer. But I don't know if they remember what it is like when it is 20 degrees with a 40 mile wind blowing from the north. I expect to hear my Mom do a lot of complaining about the weather. She told me she just won't get out of the car.

I wonder if it is from my Mom I learned the Art of Complaining?