Cold. Dark.

I know it is Winter Season here in SF because I am knitting. Like a crazy woman, I am knitting. I cannot get enough of it — plugging away at a pair of socks at work; a project next to the beanbag chair where I sit when I watch my Netflix each night; skeins are strewn around the apartment waiting their turn to be next on my needles. I try to motivate myself through the cold, damp Bay summer, when sticks and string would be warming and comforting and chase away the depression, but it's the clean crisp air that brings it out in me.

That and, of course, the looming threat of Christmas on the horizon. But that's another story.

Really, San Francisco has two seasons, and three types of weather. Chilly, damp, clouded summer; brisk, nippy, bright winter. Cool and wet; cold and dry; week of warm in-between. It's that last one that catches you by surprise.

At any rate, I like best the winters here in San Francisco. The warm days are nice (the cold summers are horrible and depressing and will be the personal hell I'm sent to when I die), but I love stepping outside into the sun and feeling the bite on my nose. I get to wrap myself up in one of my hand-knit scarves, put on a wool hat, pull on my fingerless gloves, and just moving feels wonderful and warming. The chill is only skin-deep, and flushes your cheeks. Your breath steams up just a bit from your mouth and disappears.

(On a side note, the wonder of seeing my own breath is probably half the reason I like to smoke now-and-again: it's being able to do that any time I want to, no matter the weather.)

I even love the early darkness, now that we're post-Daylight Savings. It makes the city that much more magical, especially as we enter the holiday season and stores stay open longer, people start stringing little lights on their houses and in the trees along the street. We get to watch the sunset from my office window — we're in a high-rise and can see the ocean from our desks on a particularly clear day — and then I bundle up and head out into the crowds, on the MUNI underground to my bus, packed in with other people only too glad for the warmth afforded by an overcrowded train.

My only regret is that there isn't a light dusting of snow, but I'm obviously on the wrong coast, in the wrong town for that. And the fact that I wish for it probably means I haven't lived in it enough to hate it. Soon enough.

Things are moving and shaking. Weekends filling up, and I'm already starting to think ahead to next year. What I want to do, what I need to shed, what I need to build up. How I'm going to be able to afford it all. Somewhere back there, in September, was a pivot in my life, and I think think think I'm trying hard to stay on the new path and not swing a full 360 back onto the old.