It's evening on Sunday.  The busy weekend is behind me, and I have achieved success in attending to several important commitments: 

Eric's  birthday trip has been traveled and successfully completed, if you're going to be somewhat flexible in what your definition of success is;

Parker has been entertained, and is ready for another week of schoolwork, if you are somewhat flexible in what your definision of school"work" is;

Mack is still gainfully employed, if you can cut him some slack on that "gainful" term;

Jean has fiddled, shopped, worked out, practiced dance, and socialized, if you count computer time.

Simplemister  is still depressed. 

Twenty-one bright third and fourth graders have rammed their intellects against the brick wall of the eighth grade ACT test.

And your simplelsie has driven, washed, worked,  schmoozed, facilitated, monitered, parented, guided, soothed, disciplined, listened, counseled.

I can't wait for Monday morning when I get to work.  I can use the rest.

Spring

For a few hours today it was spring.

Warm sunshine peeling off jackets

Rain promised in the breeze

Puddles to hop over on the ground

(from melted snow, not april showers, but no one will snitch)

Snow fort builders turned to jumpropes and tetherballs.

Bells calling us in from recess brought groans and footsteps dragging into line,

not running to get out of the biting cold, but dawdling for a few stolen minutes

of spring

Before the cold snow returns tomorrow.

Jean has joined a gym and is working her fanny off four or five times a week.  She relies on me for rides and while I wait for her I buzz through a drive thru and get a little somethin' to slurp while I read and wait for her.

Her fanny and mine are becoming inversely proportional.  She, however is taking hers to Italy this summer and her chances of needing a firm tush are much greater than mine.

That's all.

Consider yourself warned.

So young Parker is practicing for his talent day at school.  After almost a year break from piano lessons he is trying to learn a new song to play for his 12-year old classmates.  They are not likely to have heard the song before and I think they will probably be underwhelmed by the whole thing.

Is it better to encourage him to take a risk or discourage him from this risky endeavor?  It beats me.  The best outcome would be that he would decide he'd like to return to lessons.  He liked his old teacher, but she is currently fighting off cancer and the stress of trying to teach this unmotivitated preteen is one stress she had to jettison.  We miss her cheerful acceptance of his haphazard practice.

We're really going to miss her come talent day.

It's thirty degrees out, windy and miserable.  Plants in flower beds are brown/gray/dead/dry/lifeless.  Underneath the trees in bushes in the back, howver there is bright green.  Something is growing despite the cold and muck of March.

Tulips?  Daffodils?  Crocus?

No, it's garlic mustard, a weed so invasive that the state Department of Natural Resources has mounted a comprehensive program to eradicate it within its borders.  It started greening up while there were still snowpiles back there.  Today I am going to wade through the mudflats and start yanking it out.

Gardening as I practice it.

(While I am embarrassed to be starting two entries in a row with weather reports (see yesterday's post), the wind chill today is 14 degreesF and the dread-saturated thought of spending two hours outside in this windy, snowy, damp circle of hell-type enviornment (if hell were frigid  and not fire and brimstone hot) has overcome my resistance to posting two lame entries in a row.)