JUST IN TIME FOR SUMMER

As usual, Spring has gone from zero to sixty like it saw a state trooper. (Sue me for the cliche.) The other day I swear it was going to snow, and now it's eighty degrees. It's small wonder that I have spent the last week hacking up both of my lungs.

We are in full-frontal Spring mode. This means bi-weekly visits to the car wash to get the green sheen off. It means battling bugs as I walk past the swampy wetlands in the center of my apartment complex. It also means porch season.

I have a small porch, and, yes, I am the one who still has Christmas lights on the railing. They are timed to go on around 8:00 p.m., and they are staying up and functional until someone tells me otherwise because I enjoy them.

I also have a round table and two folding chairs out there. I've had the set forever, and the only reasons that I still have it are because it's durable and I'm lazy. So, this Spring, the challenge is to complete a mini re-do of the small porch and replace the outdoor table set . . . but only if it coordinates with the Christmas lights that I refuse to take down.

Once the porch is done, feel free to blame me for the nasty, cold, rainy weather. After all, nothing ruins a decent outdoor season like getting the great outdoors exactly the way you want it and then being unable to enjoy it. Either that or I will continue to hack up my lungs and have to stay inside until next winter.

Either way, Spring is here. Finally. Just in time for summer, thank goodness.

A DAY FOR MOMS AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!

Can you guess the Mom/Ma/Mama/Momma/Mother connected to these?  Enjoy! May all you moms, step-moms, sub-moms, quasi-moms, pet moms, grand-moms ... Have a mother of a great day!

1.  Cass Elliot 

2.  Recent Saint

3.  Frank Zappa 

4.  Literary poem writer

5.  Irish-American labor activist

6.  Malcolm Turner/Hattie Mae Pierce  

7.  Full Metal Jacket

8.  Vicki Lawrence

9.  Cello player

10.  Honey Booboo

11.  Dearest with a coat hanger

12.  Pa and "Tea..."

13.  Whistler painted one

14.  Abba song movie

15.  King's granny

IMPATIENT FOR SUMMER

I'm impatient for summer.

There are many reasons, but the main reason is that for the first time in over a decade, I'm cold. (Menopause is not for sissies.) I'm cold, and I'm tired of being cold. I'm tired of having to warm up my car in the morning, I'm tired of turning on the heat in my home, and I'm tired of standing under boiling hot showers to ease the ice that has settled deep into my bones. I'm tired of wearing socks with my shoes. I am tired of shoes, period.

A recent trip to Maine brings me along the coast. 

Oh, I can see summer. It's all along the beaches and it's creeping into the marinas that are slowly waking back to life. It's not here yet, but the air is full of summer. Low tide's stench seeps into the car because the windows are cracked wide (while the car's heat blasts on my feet), and the aroma reminds me that soon, very soon, perhaps not soon enough, I will be sitting in a canvas beach chair, book spread open, watching the waves hit the sand and hiding my snacks from aggressive seagulls.

I hope the summer lingers for as long as it seems to be taking to get here.

It's a short but wonderful season up here. I know that when I retire I can and will drive or fly or teleport myself to any beach I want to at any time so that I can have summer at a moment's notice. Of course, then I will complain about missing the snow and how those first flakes are magical and how amazing it is to be inside while a storm rages outside, trapping us all under piles of whiteness.

For now, though, I am impatient for summer, and I'll count the days until it finally arrives.

PLAYING WITH THE YOUNG ONE

Playing with a three-year-old

Can bring a lot of joys.

It also means strange happenings

When playing with the toys.

Sorting out the characters

Can often be a hassle.

Pretty soon you'll find Tarzan

Skateboarding on a castle.

Barbies playing make-believe,

Zooming round in cars.

Stuffies fly across the room

Orbiting toward Mars.

Styling dolls' heads full of hair

With fake brushes and clippers.

Stuffing little princesses

Inside some football slippers.

It may not always make much sense

But when the time is done,

Being in that magic world

Is fascinating fun.

TACO TOILET SIGNS AND THE SNEAKER CAPER

My friend and I are on an afternoon road trip adventure when we both realize that it has been a while -- a long while -- since we peed. We have more errands to run, including adding one more gang member to our shenanigans, so we set our sights on the nearest public restroom. We are on a busy multi-lane street with no safe crossings, so we are trying to limit our choices to major intersections with traffic lights or something on our side of the road.

Like magic, Taco Bell appears around the corner. 

The place isn't very busy for midday on a Saturday, which makes parking easy. We pull right up to a space near the entrance and clamber out to make haste to the potty. Except, of course, we are instantly sidetracked because strange things seem to happen when we are out together exploring. 

Despite a genuine need to get to the bathroom, we are distracted by a shoe. Not just any shoe. A sneaker. Not just any sneaker. A lone burnt-orange sneaker sitting all by its lonesome on the sidewalk right outside the door to Taco Bell.

Of course we take a picture of it. That's part of today's adventures, the whole documentation and proof piece of it all. But this just seems strange. Is it a worker's shoe? In which case, is an employee walking around with one bare foot? Or, did someone run so fast to get food that they simply ran right out of their own shoe? Even more frightening, was the shoe leftover from a patron whose Taco Bell lunch simply caused him to literally blow right out of his own footwear?

We find this shoe weird but also humorous, which is a dangerous thing for women in desperate need of restroom. We make our way to the bathroom corner of Taco Bell and discover two things: The ladies' room is a single-seater (horrifying), and the gender signs are hilarious. Naturally, while one of us is using the facilities, the other snaps pics of the placards.

Both bathroom gender signs are modernistic geometric designs, and both are clever and clear. The designs start with two long hooks. For the men's room, the hooks are crossed in the middle, indicating waist and hips leading to long legs, and the top curves of both hooks appear to be brawny shoulders. On top is a small circle. Apparently, only bulked-up men with tiny heads can use this potty.

The women's sign, on the other hand, takes the hook design to another level. The tops of the hooks represent delicate shoulders and arms, and a triangular design for a dress provides the assumption of gender. However, and this is the part the suddenly sends me into a giggling fit in Taco Bell while waiting for my friend to emerge from the bathroom: The pattern is designed in a way that the poor young lady's legs are crossed, presenting an image of someone who really, really, really needs to pee.

Now that we have caused a bit of a stir taking a photo of the sidewalk and also photos of the bathroom doors, my friend and I quickly and quite audibly (because we are howling with laughter) sneak-er our way back to the car, wishing that perhaps we were not so close to the entrance nor within eyesight of the entire (possible semi-shoeless) staff. 

SCAVENGER HUNT BINGO

What do we do on a gloomy, cold April day? My friends and I go on a South Shore scavenger hunt.

Planning a scavenger hunt is pretty easy. If you're a normal person, you probably start with touristy things to do. If you're a little twisted like I am, you'd start with Roadside America, the website where people post about oddities and strange places to see and visit.

Once I have a possible map area of where we can (and might) go in one day, I start researching more things for the list. In addition to the Roadside America website, Google maps is very good at marking local landmarks and interesting stops -- you just have to be willing to scrounge around a bit with the map.

Next step is plotting the course.  If something is too far out of the way, off the beaten path, or not recommended, I cross it off the list immediately. Then, I narrow the list down to about twenty-two or so possibilities. Every location is added to Master List. This includes order or visit based on location, and detailed directions on where each oddity is located.

The last step before traveling is to create a Bingo card. Using a 25x25 grid system, insert FREE to the center space. Take all of the locations and enter them randomly into the Bingo card. Any leftover spots become breakfast, lunch, or dinner spots (or just snack break). 

My friends and I randomly start the scavenger hunt too late to get to everything in a single day, but we have fun finding things and adding stickers to our Bingo card:  Jet on a pole, Land of Lincolns statue and plaque, statues of  Lone Sailor and Abigail Adams and John Adams and John Hancock, United First Parish Church, a very nearly perfect granite sphere weighing 9.5 tons, and the first Dunkin Donuts. We also find s shoe sitting by itself outside of Taco Bell.

We have many more things on the Bingo card for next time, including a log cabin replica, USS Salem (which, apparently, is tricky to get near), a memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti (convicted murderers who may or may not have been guilty), and the grave of the donut-hole inventor. 

Instead of saying, "What do you want to do today?" try doing something different. Odd. Strange. Twisted. Try playing Scavenger Hunt Bingo with other like-minded weirdos.

IT'S BARELY APRIL

I understand that it is barely April. 

I understand that we survived March without holidays nor random days off.

I understand that we sprang ahead an hour so we gained some daylight.

I understand that we had just as many weekends last month as every month.

I understand that it is still cold out and might snow at any given moment.

I understand that the temperature fluctuates sharper than a menopausal woman.

I understand that my skin is tired of cracking and itching.

I understand that humans cannot live on soups and stews alone.

I understand that people shouldn't be cooped up inside for extended time periods.

What I don't understand is how one warm day in New England resets my entire inner circuit board into thinking it is summer already.

I'm ready. You're ready.

Everyone is ready.

(Except my bathing suit body. 

My bathing suit body is most definitely not ready.)