The Spring has sprung!

Maybe it is wishful thinking but after one of the worst winters in memory, I actually enjoyed nearly two weeks of very comfortable weather. Since I spent a good portion of my adult life in the Golden State before descending on the Midwest, we refer to these mild, sunny days as ‘California weather’. Secretly I call really smoggy days that same thing too, but laid-back n’ loopy Californians don’t really mind. Nothing there is ever right or wrong or black and white – just a varied palette of colorful shades of gray.

That got me thinking about what weather characteristics I might associate with some of the other states in my travels. I guess Washington state and Oregon would equate to damp fog mostly? I can’t say it has rained on me every day I have visited, but most anytime I cross the state line into these places, I start to feel clammy. That is a good thing when you hit the beach in search of clams, but the rest of the time, it just makes me want to double up on my Depends.

Pretty much the dutch oven trifecta of America is Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico. I can always count on these states when I get the urge to fry eggs and roadkill on any old strip of vacant sun-baked highway. Except for about two days in December, these places literally can suck the spittle right out of you. I do enjoy the desert though, since you never need a hair dryer and except for the cacti, nobody worries about water weight gain. The irony here of course is that in all my visits to Denver, Chicago, New York, and Saint Louis , the only airport that I have been snowed in was … you guessed it , NEW MEXICO (but only for 2 days in December).

Pretty much any of the Eastern seaboard states have greeted me with a big bag of wind. It is not always a cold blow, but rarely have I touched my tootsies in the waters from Massachusetts to Florida without discovering rich mineral deposits or even full-sized sand castles in all of my personal nooks and crannies. Hmmm, it seems that not only Spring has ‘sprung’ in my brain but clearly my frontal lobe-bone is off its rocker too?. Fortunately I already live in the Midwest and everyone knows that our weather here is really REALLY CRAZY!