No matter the thrill of post-Christmas shopping, winter is my scheduled depression time.  I’ve come to think of the January-February freeze as Dark Spell; when the sun won’t stir herself awake until long past my jogging hour, yet scurries back to her bed in the west before I make dinner.  The biting winds tear through our sycamore till it’s a picked clean carcass.  With no signs of rebirth to regenerate me, I take comfort in baked goods, making the only things looking up are my blood pressure and my weight.