Monday 7 April 2008 - It Might Actually Be Spring
Spring arrives in bits and pieces around here, tantalizing us with brief and fleeting appearances, surrendering time and again to wintry weather before finally deciding to stay awhile.
Or, to put it less poetically…
Our seasons here in southwestern Michigan go something like this: WIIIINNNNTTTTERRRR, Spring-Winter-Spring-Winter-Spring-Summer-Spring-Winter, Sprriinngg, Summer-Spring-Summer-Spring, SUUMMMMMMERRRR, Fall-Summer-Fall… and so on. Notice that we do not get SPPRRRRIIIINNNNGGGG, only Sprriinngg-- and that only if we’re lucky.
You get the picture. Sure, we get 5 or 6 weeks of spring around here. It’s just that most of it comes in 2- or 3-day spurts. Windbreakers share space in the mudroom with snowpants and boots for far too many weeks. We don’t dare put the latter away before the end of March, and sometimes not even then.
I have friends and relations residing in vast and sundry locations, such as Arizona and Texas, where the month of February is considered “spring”. Or more likely, SPPRRRRIIIINNNNGGGG. They continue to insist on this, even though I have informed them time and again that February is, in fact, the throes of winter. I mean, WIIIINNNNTTTTERRRR. Especially this year. Where I live, we broke the all-time record for February snowfall with over 4-1/2 feet of it, and we didn’t even need that extra day to do it. (In fact, we didn’t even need the entire last week of February, as the record was broken in the wee hours of February 21.) And, a few unseasonably lovely days in January notwithstanding, the rest of the winter was much the same.
I don’t mind having a lot of snow. (Except for mid-April blizzards. And even those make great blogging material.) Snow is prettier than drab winter earth, the kids can have fun in it, it makes Christmas seem like Christmas. The guy who plows the driveway has reasonable rates, the 12-year-old shovels for even more reasonable rates (room & board), we all have warm boots, Huz has four-wheel drive; we’re all set. Snow, to me, is not a big problem in itself. In fact I rather like it. (Huz thinks I’m crazy for that.)
No, it’s not the amount of snow that was the problem this winter; it was the weather. We just didn’t have very many “nice” winter days. “Playing in the snow” was practically a non-existent occurence, as most days we had either (a) a furious, howling blizzard, (b) a warm front accompanied by pouring rain and resultant slush, or (c) 17-degree temps with bitter wind. It was a miserable winter for playing -or even being- outside. And that gets really old after a while. Although I don’t particularly dislike winter, I’ve been eager to see this one come to an end.
I finally evicted winter from the fireplace mantle a month ago...
But bringing some spring inside didn’t change the situation outside. And my resolve to cast out all vestiges of wintriness from the living room before Easter vanished with the news that we’d have a Resurrection Snowstorm. Which we did. I figured it was pointless to be in a hurry to take these guys down and banish them to their summer home in the tiny hamlet of Box Within Basement, and so they have stayed, as usual, into April.But their time has come. Winter has left again and seems to mean it this time. Not that we’ve seen the last of the white stuff, necessarily-- rare is the April when no snow falls-- but what little does come will likely be fleeting, as temperatures steadily climb from the 40’s to the 50’s to the 60’s… I do believe that Sprriinngg is finally upon us.
Hooray!
Last Saturday was a day to celebrate the arrival of spring. Clear, sunny, warmish; it couldn’t have been nicer. And did I take advantage of it? You bet I did. It was a perfect day for… hanging out online and exploring the net.
That is, if your name is “Laundry” or “Soccer Ball”.
So I did my part to make that happen. Yes, folks, over the weekend my dull life took quite the exciting turn, as I hung out clothes for the first time in months and helped Huz put together Spaz’ new soccer net. (The soccer net had actually been a Christmas gift, but had of necessity remained in its box until now.) Whew, that was enough activity for me. Better wait til next week to get my bike out.
The kids’ bikes have been getting a workout, though, and so have the pogo stick and the trampoline and the sidewalk chalk. The kids are a little more tired at the end of the day and a little less hyper in the middle of it. That’s a good thing for everyone involved, and particularly for The Mom.
No, I don’t particularly mind winter. But I’ll be the first to admit that I like it all the more because it eventually goes away. It goes away in bits and pieces, yes, but it does go away. Here’s hoping it stays away for another seven months.
Tomorrow, after I hang out the laundry of course, maybe I’ll put the snowpants and mittens away. Or would that be tempting fate? Perhaps I should be content just to box up my snowman collection…
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After 16 years of homeschooling, I have yet to really figure out how to do it. So we muddle along, overemphasizing history and almost sort of neglecting science, and I spend way too much time making plans that we don't stick to anyway. We read a lot, and we like words, and we don't manage our time very well, and sometimes I yell.
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