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!

The cardboard ‘Stare master’

I stopped by the market to pick-up some calories in hopes to maintain my girlish Mac truck-like figure. Oh I know you thought fat grows on trees, but no, I can tell you first-hand that it has to be nurtured, cultivated, and honed on the bone to find ones ultimate Twinkie nirvana. As I grabbed one of those big grocery wheelie carts of latticed plastic, I noticed a woman staring at me. Now I don’t mind the attentions of a female just like the next hot-blooded monkey, but in my past experience, when the ‘double X-set” become fixated in a glazed gaze, it usually means trouble and makes me a tad unnerved.

Did I have an enemy ‘bogie’ between my bicuspids, or worse yet some other nasty foreign BODY hanging defiantly to my all-American one? The latter would have been likely far worse than any old chunk of ground cow or stringy asparagus doing gymnastics from my Dentyne-white ‘chew hole’. Fortunately, my tender ego was never tested since upon a comedic double-take, it turned out that the girl who could not take her eyes of me was NOT even breathing. Whew – crisis averted!

Yes stuck to my cart was some kind of real estate lady’s big giant head emblazoned upon a glossy placard with an oddly penetrating stare and Chia-pet hair. Far worse, was that her cloned noggin and ‘evil-eyes’ were not only glued to my cart, but on to every other basket in the store and parking lot too. I’m not sure I would want to see this woman even once in real life, much less go grocery shopping with her every day?

The last thing I need is some clingy real estate woman hanging around and second-guessing all the frozen and pre-packaged foods that I buy. “You know frozen peas and tortilla chips don’t sell houses … what’s needed is a hint of refreshing cinnamon, a welcoming bowl of cherries, and a healthy hand of bananas to close the deal”. Hey, I know I should consume more fresh fruit and veggies, but honestly who comes to a supermarket to learn to eat better from a cardboard sales lady with hypnotic eyes? If I truly want to stay healthy, I had better avoid the grocery temptations altogether and simply opt for the other STAIRMASTER at home!

Paper Proclivities

You know there is one thing that I cannot get enough of and that is paper and cardboard boxes. Yeah I was THAT proverbial ‘challenged’ kid who went straight for the box to play with instead of the cool toy packed inside. I’ve got stacks of various sized cartons as a teetering shrine to my shipping and packing prowess. In the office, I keep racks of paper in a variety of colors, textures and weights, from lowly yellow pads and quadrille Clearprint, to luxurious watermarked inlaid high cotton rag writing paper and glossy card stock.

The printed stuff lives here too of course. I’ve got magazines jammed into every nook n’ cranny. I try to wash frequently and avoid ‘yellow journalism’, but honestly those glossy mags make me a little itchy under my clothes. We get a daily newspaper too which these days consists mostly of ads and looks more like the phonebook WHITE pages than a sophisticated periodical that’s ‘RED’ all over.

Oh sure, you turn your nose up at my paper-thin puns now but you’d never dare to without your stash of lotion-laced Kleenex nearby. In addition to those precious greenbacks you like to sleep with, you probably have a vault filled with rolls of ultra-soft ‘potty-paper’ and reams of fancy-schmancy embossed napkins too. Surely everyone’s got a healthy stock of plaid-clad lumberjack paper towel rolls, not to mention the yards upon yards of gift wrap trappings for every celebration and major holiday?

I guess in a philosophical sense I love all the paper and boxes because they represent limitless potential. I can design and dream up most any wondrous creation on paper, and the boxes can contain nearly anything but my enthusiasm. At today’s high prices, it’s no wonder we hold our paper proclivities with such high esteem. Except for the toilet paper of course – that stuff still tends to be HELD in rather low regard ... just below the belt I’m told.

Winter’s icy grip

Well this winter has been taxing and it is not even April 15th yet. Though I was born in cold country, I successfully have avoided significant bonding with snow and non-edible Eskimo pies for most of my adult life. Oh sure everyone’s a fan of the white stuff when eying a shiny curvaceous igloo or better yet, slathering up with a big slab of blubber before a ski outing. But it takes a brawny breed better than me to brave nature’s coldest shoulders when the ice chips are truly down.

The cave I call home and in my travels out and about remind me more of Siberia every day. 5 foot piles of street and parking-lot snow have condensed into homely and dirty icy ‘acne lumps’ all over town. I actually don’t mind having the frozen tundra cover my weedy lawn though. Not only does the morning paper slide a lot closer to the door, but when I go out to get the rag I enjoy startling the deer and watching their white tails slip and stumble in terror over the headlines.

Maybe it’s just that I have just reached geezer status, but for the first time in my life I have donned a heated blanket to keep my tootsies toasty too. Have you seen the safety warnings that accompany these big furry hunks of cloth? With that Christmas tree wiring harness, I am actually afraid to fold the thing, much less SLEEP under it. I’m not sure how I will wash off all those bed-ridden bugs when my bad ‘blankie’ starts to smell ‘rankie’ and stand on its own in the corner.

So these are the frigid fingers that Winter’s hand has dealt this year. I know soon enough, like everyone else, I will be fighting the rain, hail, wind, and the swampy heat too. I try to see that the frosty mug is always half full, despite the challenges of any season. I complain a lot but at least in the Winter the garage has its own mighty icy grip on a lot more frozen waffles and popsicles than any of my wimpy refrigerators do!

‘Wannabe’ Phil

Amazingly I survived the mighty Midwest weather blast this week relatively none worse for the wear. Fortunately the predicted onslaught of snow, ice, and A-Gore’s feverish fears of unbridled global warming, melted off like cold sleet on a hot shingle. To make things even more fun, man’s most over-rated beaver, 'Punxsutawney Phil' once again graced us all with his toothy little Gobblers Knob.

Honestly I take about as much stock in Groundhog day as I do with our local weather chimps on T.V. I just cannot get behind any creature which has THAT much hair and usually predicts the WRONG outcome rightly and the right stuff rarely. I am not sure if that groundhog is even all that interested in working up a charitable sweat for meteorology anyway. I do sympathize with ‘bucktoothed Philly’ on this front though, since I personally know how taxing working one whole day per year can be.

Who is the genius that decided on an up-sized woodchuck shadow should be the authority on predicting future weather? That makes about as much sense as the meal worms in my flour knowing what kind of bread is best to bake for a wake - which is the Hindi flatbread fav ‘ROTi’ by the way.

I’m telling you, if you are looking for dark shadows, regardless of illumination, wouldn’t it make sense to start with a 'Dumbo-sized' animal or at least a bloodsucking vampire bat-brain? So shed your top hat and high-brow overcoat because the groundhog’s day in the limelight has passed. Yeah move over Phil, because I for one am confident that Al Gore’s road-hugging inflated girth, can obviously out-shadow and predict the weather much better than all other pompous overstuffed wannabe squirrels. Just look at that hair - its gotta be windy!