Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Springing Forward

March 20 is the first day of spring this year and everyone is ready for it! Most people do hate losing the hour of sleep that "springing forward" brought this weekend, but I worked that night and losing the hour from 2-3 AM made a huge difference! An 11-hour shift is so much better than a 12-hour shift.

We got to Amarillo safely yesterday and today it's sunny and 58 degrees. Ross and I went for a 30 minute walk around his parent's neighborhood and my back is still very tight, but not as painful. I think I'll stretch tonight and hopefully try running again tomorrow. I love a good run in this weather!

I was reading my favorite springtime book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle-- a must-read if you haven't yet) and I had to share this:

...springtime makes people crazy. We expect too much, the world burgeons with promises it can't keep, all passion is really a setup, and we're doomed to get our heats broken yet again. I agree, and would further add: Who cares? Every spring I go there anyway, around the bend, unconditionally. I'm a soul on ice flung out on a rock in the sun, where the needles that pierced me begin to melt all as one.

On the new edge of springtime when I stand on the front porch shadowing my eyes from the weak morning light, sniffing out a tinge of green on the hill and the scent of yawning earthworms, oh, boy, then! I roll like a bear out of hibernation.

The maple buds glow pink, the forsythia breaks into its yellow aria. These are the days we can't keep ourselves indoors around here, any more than we believe what out eyes keep telling us about the surrouding land (i.e. that it is still a giant mud puddle, now lacking its protective covering of ice).

So it comes to pass that one pair of boots after another run outdoors and come back mud-caked-- more shoes than we even knew we had in the house, proliferating like wild portobellos in a composty heap by the front door. So what? Noah's kids would have felt like this when the flood had almost dried up: muddy boots be hanged. Come the end of the dark days, I am more than joyful. I'm nuts.

-Barbara Kingsolver

Well-put Ms. Kingsolver; I couldn't have said it better myself. I am more than joyful when sunny days arrive again!

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