The cabin fever-end of winter time blues

I've been in a bad funk. I don't want to blog or read blogs. I don't want to ski or go for a nice walk. I don't want to sew--upstairs on shirts and pants or downstairs on my quilt. I've had three gallons of paint upstairs for almost a year, but I don't want to paint my bedroom. I hurried to get off my seed orders in plenty of time to plant the early things indoors, but now I don't want to. The empty, washed out milk cartons are waiting for the onions and the plastic mushroom boxes for the pansies and thyme, but I don't plant them. My heavy duty house-cleaning that was started has come to a halt. My houseplants get thirsty and my birdfeeders get way empty before they get filled. I am only interested in a few things--reading, working on crossword puzzles, looking out the window, having a cup of tea and a Hershey bar. If I cook we eat it. If I don't my husband has a braunsweiger sandwich and I have a bowl of cereal. My husband says, "Don't go icefishing. That will only depress you more." Because we have been doing that. We paid $100 so that we could drive out onto the lake on a four lane, always nicely plowed ice road anytime we want to all season. At the end of February when all our licenses expired, we got new ones for husband, wife, and fish house. Our truck is always loaded with gas-powered ice auger, heater, radio, lantern, five-gallon buckets, shovel and poles, etc. So we go. Husband still has faith, I think, but I don't. We drive out to the house, drill open the holes, shovel away the ice chips and then we sit. Hour after hour and not a thing happens. You can turn on the radio, read a book, go through your mail. But right in front of you is that hole, that floating bobber, and nothing happens. One afternoon, a neighbor from the nearest house came over to give us his minnows. He reported that though fishing was admittedly slow he and his friends had caught one nice one and some little ones. Is it because we have been married for almost 45 years, or was it just the perversity of human kind that caused us both to instantly have the same thought? "He's lying, don't you think?", my husband asked me. "Yeah", I said. How to explain then, when you drive up the steep ice bank onto the resort parking lot, what's going on in the fish cleaning building. Young men, their jackets off, sleeves rolled up, filet knives flashing. We slink home, old unskilled worthless fisherman and woman. But I noticed today while looking out the window on this sunny, cold bright blue sky day that the pussy willow bud are swelling and white.