Snow!

We'll save the glorious outdoor scenes for later -- there will be plenty of those!

Here's a bit of "snow" on my holiday tree.

I love these crisp white crocheted snowflakes, and I have quite a few. I think this one came from my friend Gina, creative crafting soul in just about any medium she chooses to work with.

Gina and I used to work together at WKAR and it was a most remarkable creative partnership. We often said it was as though we shared a brain -- at times, when we were writing video segments for a campaign, we couldn't tell who had written which!

Here we are in the long ago at an Oscar party with our friends Carol (dressed like me) and Peter. That's Gina in the middle. It was during the dark years, when all of us were unattached and unfulfilled. (We all thought we were overweight and unattractive, too. Do you know how I would KILL to look like that again?) Below, Carol and I are with Jim.

A group of us working at the station bonded together as "SPIES" -- Single People In the Emotional Sewer (or, if we weren't being so hard on ourselves, "In Emotional Stress").

We had wonderful times, this offbeat group of three women and four men. We loved movies and our 24-hour progressive dinner movie marathon was a big hit! So was Gina's Oscar party and our "Blue Valentine's" party.

I'm pleased to say that we have lives now. Some are retired, some are married, some have children. We may still get into emotional stress now and then, but the sewer seems to have cleared out!

That first snowfall -- we approach it with such anticipation. And the beauty of it all -- when it's really a lovely, fluffy one and the after-sky is a brilliant, almost indescribable blue -- can dazzle.

Then reality sets in. There is shoveling. Bundling up. Taking care not to slip on the ice beneath the deceptively soft-appearing snow. We grab onto little things -- the color of the cardinals in the trees, the skittering of squirrels in the snow.

Those of us who aren't snow bunnies long for a light winter. A January thaw (and a February one, while we're at it).

But then spring returns, bringing with it crocus and daffodils, blue skies, warmer temperatures.

Seeing the snowflakes on my tree reminds me that in the big scheme of things, winter is short-lived. And soon, like the snowflake, it will be retired for a number of months. Like stress.