Lost: One giant ball of fire in the sky.

Hard to believe our pool will be open for business in 6 days.

This has been a tough month. There's been the whole going-back-to-work-after-vacation thing. And there's also the whole writing-the-first-draft-of-a-new-book thing (to say nothing of the whole writing-the-first-draft-of-the-last-book-in-this-series-and-I-mean-it-this-time thing). But then there's this never-seeing-the-sun thing.

I'm not what you'd call a sun worshiper, and I don't usually suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. But this is getting ridiculous. Here in the DC area, May is usually beautiful, weather-wise, with highs in the 70s and 80s and only a handful of wet days. Yeah, well, not this year. We set a record earlier this month for the longest stretch of days on record with measurable precipitation -- 15 days straight, from April 27th through May 11th. (Coincidentally, April 27th is the day I came home from Ireland, where the weather was beautiful for the whole week I was there. And yes, that contributed to the whole going-back-to-work-after-vacation thing.)

But don't think we were back to normal after the 11th, just because the sun came out that day. We have, in fact, had rain on 17 of the first 22 days of the month. Through the 17th, skies were overcast at noon on 75 percent of the days in May. And it's been chilly a lot. Today, for example, Washington, DC, was the coldest city east of the Rockies -- just 57 degrees this afternoon.

It got so bad at one point that Washingtonian Magazine published an "explainer" so we wouldn't be frightened when we saw the sun.

To make matters worse, the apartment management switched the HVAC system over to air conditioning while I was in Ireland. So not only has it been cloudy, damp, and chilly outside most of the time, it's also been cold inside our apartment. I'm currently wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and a shawl. On the 22nd of May.

But do not despair, dear readers! For the weather guys say we have just one more day of this crap, and then our giant ball of fire will return to the heavens. We might even have a rain-free Memorial Day weekend to kick off summer.

I hold no illusions, by the way, about DC's chances for nice weather over the next three or four months. I'm dead certain that summer will quickly ramp up to its typical hazy, hot, and humid self, and I'll be dreaming then of chilly May days.

But for now, I'm so done.

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These moments of dreary blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.