A Little Like Spring
Good morning, friends, it’s the first day of spring! The sun is shining, the birds are singing outside my window and my cats are shedding white hair all over everything. Truly it is spring indeed! And, in a strange twist of fate, it actually feels a little spring-ish. I just walked outside without my jacket and it was only mildly chilly instead of freezing. I am most pleased with this progress. It’s been absolutely dreadful for the past week and a half and I’m pretty done with it now. I am quite satisfied with our little dose of winter, we can move on.
This is the way of it, there in Western PA, though. We expect spring to be miraculously warm and springy and when we get there winter is still holding tight and doesn’t want to let go, even though it ignored us most of its season. So we enjoyed some warm weather but as spring actually approaches we get dumped with snow or freezing temperatures or both, just to make sure we never forget who’s boss. Two years ago I was griping about snow on the first day of spring. Now I have resigned myself to the cycle.
Pleasantly enough, though, there is only one little tiny patch of snow remaining in our yard, where I dumped the porch snow while shoveling. I had a dream, though, that everything was extra super covered in snow this morning and I did not want to shovel. So I’m extra relieved that there isn’t any snow to be found. On top of that, my mom’s coming down for a movie day today so we’re super extra glad there isn’t any snow because that makes everything that much easier.
So now the spring activities can start. I’ll have to pull out all of my clothing from everywhere, spread it all out so I can look at what I’ve worn and what I haven’t, put some stuff in a bag that will never actually leave the house, and try to sort through what I need to keep out and what can be put away. It’s always super dangerous, switching out winter and summer clothes. The weather can still so easily turn on me. Really, I should probably wait until may, or at least late April before actually switching my stuff. I’m just a little tired of wrestling with my shirts drawer. I tend to leave more short sleeve shirts out during winter than long sleeves during the summer. I used to layer my shirts a lot, which I don’t so much anymore. Still, the habit has stuck and I have probably five short sleeve shirts hanging out in my drawer that are just taking up unnecessary space. The weather is, however, supposed to drop again, even if only briefly this week, so I’ll have to be patient.
Spring cleaning should also be a thing. Logan and I have been talking about cleaning things up all winter and it has yet to happen. Maybe come April we’ll actually go out and get the stuff we need to shove all our unwanted items in the basement. Everything needs to go in something plastic to protect it from the damp and we don’t have enough plastic containers for all our stuff. So we’ll work on that. Logan also has this huge deadline coming up in April which will be super stressful. They had switched it to a less stressful goal and then back to the super stressful goal that was giving them all nightmares, and I just really want to shake his upper management and scream at them to stop being idiots, but that’s a rant for another day. I have to keep reminding myself that sending the president of the company a strongly worded letter would not actually help anything.
My mind is buzzing with spring thoughts, that probably won’t take hold until almost summer. Planting my new garden is up there on my list of things to do this spring. I’m so excited to try again this year, now that I sort of, kind of know what I’m doing. We’ll try tomatoes again, and probably give the jalapenos another shot. I’ll have to think of other things to grow. I think I’d like to look for some wild flowers to plant along the fence. I’ll have to ask my dad if my irises will come back. I can’t remember, but I think they do. My poor daffodils are so sad, though. They came up in the warm weather and then got like a foot of snow dumped on them over the coarse of a week. They are very depressed looking for the most part, but some of them have simply closed up and will hopefully open up and look pretty again soon.
We also have plans for an electric lawn mower this year. The rotary mower worked well enough for last summer, but it didn’t deal well with the sticks or tiny twigs that fell from the neighbor’s tree. I’d pick up sticks before mowing and still have to stop several times to pull a hidden twig from between the blades. It was a hassle that we don’t want to deal with this year, so we’ll be upgrading to electric, hopefully.
I also kind of want to get a bird feeder. We could have done that this winter, but we didn’t. I think the cats would really enjoy a bird feeder, and bird watching is a family hobby at my parent’s house that I kind of miss. We should also put more flea medicine on the cats. We haven’t all winter, but with warm weather coming back we should really start again. It’s just hard because they’re so snuggly, we hate to put it on and then not pet them because they have stuff all over their necks. So we have to wait for a day when we’re not going to be home all day and then do it the night before so we don’t feel so bad.
We have lots of spring plans to make and things to do. The Pittsburgh anime convention is coming up in a few weeks, so that’s exciting. My brother and I always enjoy looking around and playing in some games in the RPG room. I have a cosplay in the works with a friend who will hopefully be able to make it at least on Saturday. It’ll be nice to pull out some light clothing soon, to enjoy going out without a heavy coat on. Maybe I’ll even go out without a hat. My hair is so close to being long enough to properly do stuff with. Now if only it would cooperate. Anyway, I’ve gone on long enough. Happy first day of spring, my friends!
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