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  • Of Marsh Marigolds and Cowslips: Signs of Spring

    Of Marsh Marigolds and Cowslips: Signs of Spring

    March wildflowers

    I will be the gladdest thing under the sun!
    I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

    ―Edna St. Vincent Millay

     

    Today was the snowstorm that wasn’t. The forecast called for anything from 0-16 inches, and we pretty much just got WIND and some rain.

    I mourned the loss of John Bolaris, our ex-weatherman who once predicted another storm that wasn’t, prompting schools to close, salt truck drivers to work overtime and households to stock up on bread, milk and eggs for no good reason. It’s bad enough to be promised a foot of snow and given a smattering of rain; it’s downright insulting when you don’t have a personal love-hate relationship with a local weatherman to blame it on.

    If I’m being very honest, though, I don’t mind at all the lack of snow. I’m ready for winter to be over. Ready for the sun on my face.

     

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    One of those freak warm days in January, 
    when I got to run in a tank top.

    Check out my pit sweat. Nice.

     

    I missed the emergence of the snowdrops last week, right on schedule, those wonderfully pale noddings of warm weather to come. Jeff brought me one while I was still shivering with fever, but I didn’t get to see or photograph them outside.

    On Sunday I saw these yellow flowers while on the trails. I’m not sure what they are; the timing suggest marsh marigold but the leaves are wrong; cowslip seems right but if so they are quite early. Professor Google has let me down, so if you know please share 🙂

    I’m glad to know they’re still there, not wilting under a layer of melting snow. Waiting for me to run tomorrow and see them again.

    Everything is reawakening. Including me.

    Is spring stirring in you?

     

     

     

     

  • It’s Not Too Late to Get the Flu (Shot)

    It’s Not Too Late to Get the Flu (Shot)

     

    sick kid

    Sometimes you have to get sicker before you can get better.
    ― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

     

    I’ve been AWOL, and that’s for a number of reasons, but most recently it was because I was completely, utterly incapacitated by the flu.

    Prior to that, it was that general seasonally triggered malaise that I get every year. I was overwhelmed, anxious, tired, unhappy, and it wasn’t until a long-term reader (who sees me go through this every year via these virtual pages) checked on me to see if I was all right that I recognized it for what it was.

    And then the flu hit, and I completely couldn’t function. My younger kids got it first, whittling away at my already probably insufficient sleep, wearing down my immunity. It hit me like a Peterbilt truck: chills, headache, muscle ache, nausea, sore throat, unrelenting cough, unfightable fatigue. I hurt everywhere. Even my scalp hurt.

    During my waking moments I feverishly caught up on work-related tasks. During my sleeping moments— and those were unquestionable the bulk of my hours for about a week— I feverishly tossed and turned and hacked up lungs and, apparently, repeated directed my youngest child to bring me bratwurst.

    But the whole time I was composing blog posts in my mind. I missed being here.

    So, I’m back. I can breathe again, and I can stay awake for more than 20 minutes at a time again, and I can talk without dissolving into tearful coughing fits again, and it’s funny how this is enough to snap me out of my previous mild depression. I am a human being again! I feel like I have So! Much! Energy!

    You can take my word for it, though. Trust me, you do not want the flu this year; it was no joke. I am very fortunate in that I work from home and have a fair amount of flexibility in the hours I keep; I was doubly fortunate that Jeff took on all things parenting over the weekend, from soccer games to grocery shopping. Not everybody is so lucky, and I wouldn’t wish having to drag a flu-ridden self into a car and to work or a double-header on anyone.

    I know many people are very anti-flu-shot, and that’s not a debate I’m looking to have. I’m just going to say I wish I’d had the flu shot this year and if you haven’t fallen yet, I’d play the odds and go ahead and get the shot.

    If you do get the flu, I’m hearing that my 7-day duration was a short one compared to pretty much everybody else. I slept every moment I could, drank a TON of hot tea, and watched a healthy amount of Doctor Who (the David Tennant years). That sounds like an awesome prescription for a healthy happy life, doesn’t it? Maybe it will work for you. 🙂

     

    Stay healthy, be grateful for your health today, and I’ll be back to a regular posting schedule tomorrow. Promise.

     

     

  • Wordless Wednesday: Great Blue Heron

    heron

     

    When despair for the world grows in me,

    and I wake in the night at the least sound

    in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be—

    I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,

    and the great heron feeds.

    I come into the peace of wild things

    who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief.

    I come into the presence of still water.

    And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

    For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

    -Wendell Berry

     

     

    The great blue was one of my dad’s favorite birds, along with the similar white egret. They always fill me with a sense of awe, of magic and stillness, even when they aren’t spectacularly framed by fog.

    They are graceful, stately, BIG, and immensely soothing to the soul…

    and observant.  Infuriatingly camera-shy.

    I chased this one back and forth, back and forth, running the muddy trail and creeping down the briar-filled banks.

     

    It was, if I am being quite honest, one of the most enjoyable hours I’d spent in quite some time.

     

    Meditation wears many faces…

    a church is where you find it.