Spring Has Sprung a Leak

I wish that I could say that I've been romping about in the meadows, full of glee.  I wish that I could say that I have spent hours flitting from flower to flower, inhaling the wonderful aroma of spring.

That would be a lie. 

While I love the spring, with the warmer weather easing the pains in my joints, the spring does not love me back.  Random pollen, from plants that NOBODY else is allergic to, cause me to sneeze uncontrollably and leak various colorful fluids from my nose and eyes.  This certainly makes the many meetings I attend more interesting.  I used to try and pass off my tears and runny nose as something else, but now I just grab my inhaler and look pitiful.  

I could wear a mask, like I did when I was going through chemo.  I could just stay indoors for three or four months. Or I could move to Canada, where I can't possibly be allergic to anything. Except perhaps bears.   

The pollen here may cause me consternation. Oh  yes.  However, I love the colors of the wildflowers strewn all willy-nilly on every patch of grass larger than a postage stamp.  I love the glory of the mountain laurel trees, with their purple, grape-smelling flowers. It's an awesome display, every color represented, and I find myself inspired in spite of the need for tissues.  All too soon, the flowers, and the color, are gone, until next year. 

Kind of a silly metaphor for how fast life passes us by.  I had better enjoy it while I can!

Spring Random

Yesterday, the boy was sick.  He had a horrible cough, runny nose, and just enough of a fever to keep him home.  Except he wasn't sick enough to actually BE sick--where he's miserable, and sleeps all day, and needs lots of pampering. This was just a garden variety cold.  No, Zane was sick enough to have to be kept inside, where he was a little Tasmanian Devil, a veritable whirling dervish of mayhem and mischief.  Now I need two days off just to recover, I think!  I spent most of the day cleaning up Legos, toy cars, stuffed animals, etc.  It did not help that we had a fairly significant windstorm happening--it knocked out the sweet distraction that might have been cable.  Good times.

As you can see, the Mountain Laurel trees are blooming here, unless this freak wind storm kills all the blooms.  The great thing about Mountain Laurel is that the flowers smell like grape kool-aid.  Very delicious!  Plus, purple is my favorite color.   The appearance of the purple flowers means that the barn swallows who visit us every year aren't too far from arrival.  I think that it is interesting that the same family of barn swallows shows up like clockwork--how do those guys know which house is ours?  Did they memorize the address or something?  I know that it probably has something to do with complex biology and following magnetic fields and such, but I prefer a simpler answer.  Maybe they just like us. Maybe our yard has all the tasty bugs, like this one:

Yeah, I have no idea what this is, but it is not a bug I've ever seen before.  It did not appear to be interested in attacking me; it was just hanging out.  I'm okay with hanging out; it's the eating everything in sight or biting me that will get a bug squished.  I tend to leave bugs to their own devices, as they tend to leave me to mine.  It's all about karma, I think.  Some day I could be the metaphorical equivalent of the bug, after all!

This may be a weed, but it looks colorful and springy, so it gets to live.

I finished up our taxes this weekend, thanks to TurboTax.   We actually got a refund this time.  Not a big one, but enough so that we can do a couple of things around the house, like maybe grab some mulch and plant some grass/sod in the backyard.  Larry wants the sod, but I don't enjoy the scorpions that tend to hang out in the sod.  However, Larry has pointed out that we have cats, who love to play with scorpions, so I guess that we are getting sod.  Or maybe we will just blow our largesse on a night at the movies for three.      

Maisy the pup is getting BIG!!!  She's close to forty pounds, which means that she's passing up Zane in weight.  She is starting to have a little attitude, as well, and will sometimes get sassy and bark at me when I am getting her a treat.  Larry says that she's entered the teen years, at least as far as dogs go.  She has not chewed on any more sheetrock, but she has been chewing on her toy basket, dismantling it one section at a time. Instead, she and Zane have been racing all over the house and generally driving each other nuts.  I don't care how they get their energy out, as long as it does not involve fisticuffs. Bedtime is much easier for both when they get to run a little amok. 

Last Friday, some idiot decided to shoot a police officer here in San Antonio for no particular reason. (He didn't kill him, thank goodness!)  Needless to say, this did not go over well, and there was a chase. The car chase ended nearly in my brother's backyard, with the bad guy crashing a stolen SUV.  After the car chase there was a foot chase.   As a precaution, a number of schools in the surrounding area were placed on lockdown, just in case the man happened to gain access to a school building. In the Judson Independent School District where we live, this meant that their emergency system kicked into gear; doors were locked, children and adults were located and secured, and several automatic phone calls went out to all of the parents letting them know what was going on.  My child attends a private school, and while they did put the school on lockdown, closing all the doors, turning off the lights, and covering the windows, they did not call any parents.  By the time we actually heard about the incident, it was when we went to pick Zane up.  When my husband asked why we hadn't been contacted, he was essentially told, to paraphrase:  "Ain't nobody got time for that!"   This annoyed me.  Since Larry and I work in another town, I at least want to know when something is happening that might affect my child's safety, and I think that kind of a blase' attitude is unprofessional.  St. Monica is going to get a firm talking to at some point this week.

I'm visiting Stacy today.  Go check her out and maybe show her some comment love!

Signs of Spring

I have two mountain laurels in my front yard.  One of them is blooming, and I have been loving it.  There is nothing like the smell of a mountain laurel tree in bloom.  It's sort of a grape kool-aid smell, but underneath that are notes of something else.  I have yet to identify what it is, even after all these years, but I am in no hurry.  I may figure it out, I may not.  Still, I feel that it is necessary to stop and smell the mountain laurel while you can. 

It means that spring is about to show up here in these parts.  The arrival of the barn swallows outside our front door will clinch it. 

Spring is Springing

It's Spring. Easter Sunday. The bluebonnets have bloomed, and other wildflowers are in their full glory. The Glory of the Lord is being revealed, because Handel wrote the Messiah to coincide with Easter, not Christmas.

This Sunday is about being with family, religious beliefs aside. People have traveled all over to spend this day with parents, grandparents, sisters, cousins, uncles, etc. Some people will have huge gatherings with lots of children underfoot, searching for eggs. Some people will gather at their church for services, followed by a family meal, then more church. There are a few people who camp out in state parks Easter weekend; given the wildfire situation in Texas right now, I hope everyone doing that stays safe.

I think that it is great that people gather for holidays to spend time as a family. But why do they need a holiday? Is there a reason that people have to have a special day to visit their parents or grandparents? Perhaps. Maybe there is residual baggage that we carry with us, vestiges of our childhood, that prevent us from seeing our family for what they are: just people. Maybe we can't let go of anger at being the middle child, or the oldest, or the youngest. Maybe our younger brother stole our favorite toy at some point, and we are still mad about it. We may still resent our parents for not showing up at our fifth grade assembly because they had to work and couldn't get time off.

There's many other reasons that we shy away from big family gatherings. I know that I am easily overwhelmed by lots of noise and competing conversations, and I am sure that I am not the only person sensitive to such things. Since we are having the family come to our house this year, my stress level is tripled by the need for everything to be perfect, with the simultaneous understanding that it will never, ever be.

This day, maybe we can let go of our hangups, our anger, our fears that hold us back from family members. Maybe today, just for today, we can let go of those feelings that keep us separated from those around us. Maybe today we can concentrate on laughter, joy, and the beauty of wildflowers, and just BE.