Whining in a Winter Wonderland...

The holidays are coming up like a runaway train. Are you feeling a bit like you're stuck on the tracks?

It's a wet Tuesday here in the City of the Angels, chilly and grey with that patented LA light drizzle of rain that guarantees that SUV's will go merrily sailing sideways through intersections, their terrified drivers clutching the wheel, finally paying attention to the now 360 degree view of the road rather than the cell phone, latte or the crackberry.

I guess I am having a Scrooge moment.

There was a Nor'Easter hitting the East this week, dumping tons of the white stuff and looking disgustingly picturesque. Mind you, after 20 years in the sunny Hills of Beverly, I still have vivid memories of actually having to live with all that snow- not only having to shovel it or walking (and you have to learn how to walk in it) around wearing half your closet to keep, well, alive from your house to the grocery store, which will invariably be about the same temperature inside as your average bread oven, meaning that you will work up a sweat just in time to get back out in that arctic chill. No, I mean the later part of it, the part that they never take pictures of where the snowbanks turn to greyish black slush and you think that spring might just never come.

Our Winters might look like a rather drab version of Autumn in other areas, but I can at least look at the snowcapped peaks of the distant mountains from the comfort and warmth of the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Palm Drive while wearing a light sweater. Although I perhaps can't really work up the appropriate level of Christmas Spirit without the possibility of going sledding, I wouldn't change that cashmere-clad fact for the world...