The Myth of the Sunshine State

July 5, 2008

I’m going to write this post and then you’re going to leave me comments that tell me I should know better, so I just want to begin by saying that ‘I knew.’ What, specifically, you ask, did I know? I knew that San Francisco is a chilly place characterized by fog. And, therefore, it was reasonable to assume that the East Bay, which is very near San Francisco, might also be burdened with these weather conditions.

And yet, despite this reasonable knowing that I did do, I still believed I was moving to the sunshine state and that it would be sunny for me because I need sunshine, and I lived in New Jersey for a year so I deserve some sun.

Obviously since I am writing this post, and put the word ‘myth’ in the title, you can see where I’m going with this, but I’m going to go there even though it is obvious: it is not warm, nor sunny in the sunshine state of California. Almost every morning we have lived in Oakland (or at least every morning last week before we vacated for Mexico), we wake up to this low-lying gray cloud/fog/smog, I don’t even know what it is and I don’t particularly care, it is depressing and it makes me want to roll over and go back to sleep until noon when the sun, occasionally, rears its weak head to heat us up to a whopping 70 degrees if we’re lucky.

I know this is a bit whiny, but I really expected, despite knowing better, that California would be sunny and warm, at least in the summer. They tell me to hold out for fall, and I suppose I don’t really have a choice since I’ve enrolled in school and the thought of moving makes us both shudder and feel ill, but it is summer and I would like the warmth and sunshine of the sunshine state to extend north to our small enclave - I did move all the way to the sunshine state, I feel like I’m entitled to a little more sun.

Posted in life by Sarah