February. Sunshine.

I long ago made my peace with February's bleak, cold and gray days. I learned to appreciate the beauty of the sleeping trees, revel in the sharp blue of the momentarily clear skies.

But this year, I decided to try a new tack.

My daughter moved to the Los Angeles area last spring. I was looking for work then, and couldn't get out there. Then the wedding and the new job happened, and I couldn't go then, either. Over the holidays, she was working to finish her thesis, and didn't need me there distracting her.

The holidays are past, the thesis is finished (?!!!), and so I made reservations to head on out to California for the first two weeks of February. When I got on the plane in Kansas City, it was in the lower thirties. When I got off that evening in Los Angeles, it was fifty-something.

Google maps did a pretty darn good job of guiding me up to her place. My theory of, when driving in six solid lanes of traffic, stay to the middle right, also served me well. (at six o'clock on a Saturday evening, the freeway was solid cars. That's a LOT of people with somewhere to go...)

And the next morning, I got up to a forecast of 75 and sunny. It gets down into the upper forties at night here, it IS February after all, but the days have been delightful.

Some days it's been downright warm.
Some days, it's been cool, but on those days, the sun has still beamed down, which makes for a delightful crisp, cool, warm feeling I love.

I still need to work during the day, I don't have any vacation time built up just yet, but I get to do it at the kitchen table, able to look out when my computer pauses to see the hills and the sunshine.

The trip has been good for my soul. It's been wonderful to finally get to see where my baby bird landed; to meet some of her friends, to get a sense of her days. It's been wonderful to walk in the sunshine at lunchtime; to feel the warmth on my face, to know the promise of the coming spring.

Stop.  Breathe.  Relax.