SAD

I know I called this post SAD, but I'm not. I was referring to Seasonal Affective Disorder, which apparently affects a whole whack of people in my part of the world, as we get a lot of rainy days and gray skies. In a nutshell, lack of sunshine allegedly makes you sad. I have a tendency to not pay too much attention to the latest trendy disorders, as they often just seem to be convenient excuses for bad behavior. Yes, I admit to having very much a "suck it up" approach to life, which can obviously come off as extremely unsympathetic at times, oh well. Anyway, we had a great weekend, and coincidentally, the sun came out. It has been a typical January on the west coast, meaning wet wet wet. I may say that I am not affected by weather, I am the master of my domain, blah blah, but then the sun comes out and I see not just myself but my whole family perk up. There were definitely a few moments that teetered on the verge of becoming ugly - as in someone getting set to lose their temper, throw a tantrum etc. I'm talking about my daughters, by the way! Okay, that sort of behavior normally sets me off too, pushes all the wrong buttons. However, we managed to somehow avoid breakdown each time by simply laughing instead of getting mad. Really.  When Kate started to wail about not having any pants she wanted to wear to watch soccer on Saturday morning, I went way out on a limb and started stomping around the room too, basically making fun of her. Which she would normally totally freak out about, it would the WORST thing to do, but instead she laughed back at me and the moment passed. If only that would work all the time....
So my point I guess is that the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was that the sun came out this weekend. Maybe we are all affected by it's presence way more than I realized. Which would suck. Here's a question for you. Are people who live in places that are sunny most of the time always in a good mood? Or in a good mood more often than we who live in the rainy zone? Or do they just have another reason for being in a bad mood? Hmmm, I suspect this to be the case, which puts me right back where I started, thinking that blaming something called SAD on your bad behavior is just too easy.
Anyway, the sun is supposed to stay out for a few days, so we'll see how the theory holds up.