Cloudy, the sky is gray and white and cloudy
sometimes I think it’s hanging down on me.

So begins a Simon and Garfunkel tune that was one of my favorites back in the day. It was an upbeat accompaniment to teenage angst:

Cloudy, my thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy.
They have no borders, no boundaries.
They echo and they swell
From Tolstoy to Tinkerbell,
Down from Berkeley to Carmel,
Got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill…

It wasn’t until I left home for college and work that I realized I’d grown up in one of the cloudier areas of the country — the Ohio River Valley. Then I moved to northern Virginia and realized how sunny one’s days could be.

That was, until this summer …

But … we just broke a 10-day cloudy streak that began to ease up the late Tuesday afternoon and came to full fruition yesterday.

How sweet it was to sit on the deck, to walk without the umbrella, to feel the warmth of the sun on my face. It was like a tonic.

Hey, sunshine, I haven’t seen you in a long time
Why don’t you show your face and bend my mind.

My mind has been properly bent.