Spring Stuff
Most people stay far too busy during spring to pause and practice their God-given powers of observation. Although
I, too, keep a daily to-do list the length of an encyclopedia, I decided to sacrifice the time, do the discipline, pour a cup of coffee, put my feet up, and ponder profound thoughts about spring stuff:
• Most years, the March equinox invites a major April Fools Day weather joke. This year, however, an early spring has thrown our corner of the universe completely off.
• Still, I’ll take a redbud invasion over glaciers anytime.
• With the advent of pleasant weather, ants and ladybugs invaded our house. If they’re stupid enough to remain outside all winter, why enter at a great time to stay outside and play?
• The first sweet, verdant fragrance of cut grass inspires and excites me. Spring has come! Can you guess why my husband doesn’t get it?
• Spring is when we rid our yards of pretty dandelions and violets. Instead, we try to grow plants whose native habitat is the Amazon River Basin.
• Some high-fashion people wear flip-flops when it is sleeting. Other divas wear boots during heat waves. Moral of the story: Spring footwear has nothing to do with feet.
• Storing one’s winter woolies in early April can prove almost as dangerous as selling a crib at a spring garage sale. (Blizzard or baby, you pick.)
• A sadistic burglar obviously sneaked into my house and replaced my spring clothes with an identical wardrobe two sizes too small.
• Prom dresses currently bloom throughout area stores. Either that, or a lot of people are going to Vegas.
• I may never have looked like Debbie Reynolds, but I’m a singin’-inthe-rain kind of girl. You?
• As of the spring equinox, I feel the mad urge to wear white shoes, watch the Cubs and make my mother’s potato salad.
• During early spring, strawberries taste more like medicine than a fruit. Still, I buy them and savor the shortcake.
• Doesn’t it seem sacrilegious to celebrate the Resurrection during the same season we have to pay the IRS?
• Marshmallow Peeps that have resided under the sofa for a few weeks don’t taste as good. No longer best buds with chocolate bunnies, they’ve fallen into bad company, making friends with dust bunnies instead.
• Toward the end of the academic year, an epidemic sweeps our nation’s campuses, victimizing students and professors alike, as well as administration and staff. The name of this menace? The College Crankies. A large migration of university spouses has been noted to take place at this time.
• Graduations peep from around the corner. Like many parents, I have mourned my bank account’s bereavement, but celebrate my child’s achievement. The best and toughest part for me: no more children’s graduations, but grandchildren’s graduations loom on the horizon.
• Have you ever noticed that spring soccer fields smell like wild onions?
• My scudsy, corroded car, whose unfortunate state hasn’t bothered me all winter, now bothers me.
• Ditto for my house’s dirty windows. And dirty carpets. And my furniture. And . ...
• By now, my mother would have painted her entire house, our church’s Sunday school rooms, and most of its exterior. For the third spring in a row, I’m still trying to visualize which color I should paint my bathroom.
• Gangway! The golfers are loose!
• Now that spring has arrived, my husband no longer gripes about my sleeping with the window open. An added bonus: a nearby frog choir provides a nightly lullaby concert to ease us into Dreamland.
• No five-star restaurant’s swanky French dessert menu could hope to rival the first luscious, drippy ice cream cone of spring.
If the first cone tastes that good, perhaps it’s time to rouse myself from my profound cogitations and determine if the thirty-seventh one upholds the standard.
No weightier spring pursuit than that.