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.