Mr. Ips. and I were talking the other night. The past couple of years I haven't come out of the seasonal depression during the summer for various reasons. Sometimes, when you are coping with deaths and difficulties, three months isn't enough of a letup of the physical, nature-caused depression to let you deal with the mental/emotional problems that have been making it worse. We are beginning to wonder if moving south to give me at least a couple more good months would be sensible at this point. As I told him "I'm turning 38 and over half those years have been depressed ones. I need a better average than that." I always assumed that I would be the sibling who stayed around and took care of our parents as they got older - but the way things are going I think I may need to move to survive at all. It certainly wouldn't be for a few years, as the housing and job situation stabilizes (assuming, of course, that our housing and job situation stays stable!). But I did a little research on places that have national labs that the Mr. would like to work at. And I looked up their ratio of sunny days to cloudy days and compared them to ours. This table shows the city, average days of sun, average partly cloudy days, average cloudy days. Here are the results, and I'm sorry about the wide space - I haven't figured out why my blog is doing that!
CITY |
Sun |
Partly Cloudy |
Cloudy |
---|
Cleveland, OH |
66 |
97 |
202 |
---|
Akron, OH |
68 |
99 |
198 |
---|
Columbus, OH |
72 |
103 |
190 |
---|
Oak Ridge, TN |
109 |
98 |
158 |
---|
San Francisco |
160 |
100 |
105 |
---|
Denver, CO |
115 |
130 |
120 |
---|
Albuquerque, NM |
167 |
111 |
87 |
---|
Seattle, WA |
71 |
93 |
201 |
---|
Koror, PC |
4 |
80 |
279 |
---|
So, basically, anywhere but Seattle or Koror is better than here. I can't imagine moving clear out to Albaquerque and so far away from my parents - but it seems the best for the SAD. There is a lab in Livermore, CA by San Francisco that looks promising - also a long way.
UPDATE I mentioned moving south to Mom and she said she's just been waiting for one of us to move south so she can go with us!! She's sick of the dark days in Ohio like we are, and with her parents gone, there's nothing holding her here. I don't know that she'd go really far west - but it made me feel better about moving.
1 comment:
What a quandary. Once you make some sort of decision, or even start to look into it, I imagine it's kind of liberating. And there is no reason you and Mr. Ips can't reimagine life elsewhere -- if I could, you know I would! The chart is interesting. For some reason I didn't think of San Fran as all that sunny, either. The Southeast can be really rainy during the winter, so you almost do have to look to the SW, or the NW, but not TOO far N as you do end up with a lot of rain (that would make it The Great NorthWET I suppose). Feel better soon!
A change can do wonders.
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