Spring is here, but it's taking its sweet time. Yeah, yeah, I know: We are not quite out of the snow zone. As a New Englander, I should relax. We've had snow in May around here.
So, it is a wonderful surprise when my daughter and son-in-law send me home from their house with a bouquet of flowers. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not a surprise that they gave me the flowers, because they're generous like that. The surprise is having a pop of color and spring inside of my house.
Just in the nick of time, I might add.
We Northerners are entering the WTHDIWTW stage of Spring. It's the same weather pattern that repeats itself in Autumn, but in October it's torture. Right now in April it's like free mental health boosters. The WTHDIWTW season is when the morning temperatures are Arctic and the afternoon temperatures hover around the equator. The car heat blasts in the morning, and the air conditioner blasts in the afternoon. That's at least manageable.
What is NOT so manageable is the clothing situation. Hence: WTHDIWTW. This stands for What The Hell Do I Wear To Work. If I wear my coat, I'm fine in the morning but feel like a total jackass carrying it into the house when I get home. If I brave only a sweatshirt on my way out to work, I suffer frostbite by arrival, but my ride home is quite pleasant even with the windows wide open.
Even the plants are suffering. They're all out there in the elements thinking, "Do we bloom? Do we grow? Should we turn green? Are those buds on my branches? What the hell do I do with myself?" The hardy ones throw caution to nature and pop out of the ground with sheer defiance. The more delicate ones bud a teeny bit then get tramped down when the snowplow comes by.
This all means that the bouquet of flowers not only lifts my spirits, it provides hope to all the plants outside the window that there really is life after winter . . . if only we all, plants included, could just figure out what the hell we are supposed to be wearing to survive these days.
