. Spinning .

I have never found the plaintive cry of the whipporwill to be a sad and lonely one, although it cuts the night alone without reply.  But it is happy, chirpy, persistant.

This morning, though, the true sadness of the mourning dove coo-cooing breaks my heart.  It seems so out of place in the bright sunlit waking world.  Lonely, plaintive, yes, and mournful.

I wish it would look around and see the blue of sky, the white puff of clouds, the little snow left sparkling out its life, and shut the hell up.

I snuck in my purchase last night after class, and just unboxed my new toy this morning:  a paper trimmer.

I haven’t shown it to Jim yet, he worries so.  He’s hidden my Black & Decker electric chainsaw, but with the spring sunshine and birds chirping this morning, I’m getting antsy to go buzzing around the backyard. 

I’ll find the chainsaw.  I’m more clever than he is.  I’ve always found the chocolates before the holidays.

They promise a sunny sixty degrees today.  It is too early to tell if it will come to pass. 

I must work in the shop very early, then slip out for a meeting, then return to frame, print and ignore the loud noises my home pc is making to force it to print its heart out.  I think it’s only the fan–not the cpu fan–and it’s too much trouble now to take it apart to look inside. Otherwise, I’ll need to hook the laptop directly to the printer which would leave me computerless in the shop.  I have another printer in the shop (unopened) but it’s not set up for double-sided printing. 

Woe is me.  And on such a promised lovely day.

Five am is light already.  Big changes over the weekend.  He still needs headlights to start out, but the destination sees the day. 

Quiet this morning, overcast still from the pounding rains.  The birds aren’t sure there’s much to sing about.  Cozy in the nests and bushes, reluctant to get wet.  Reminds me of the bathing of a pet parakeet; angry with us, sat brooding at the opposite end of the cage until his feathers dried.  We thought, egotistical.  How would we know?

No snow, but rain and rain and rain.  To melt the remnant snow of winter, to seek the bulbs and roots beneath the earth and nudge them to explode in shoots and blooms.

A back to almost normal week.  Classes, schedules, chores.  Semester break was productive in many ways and yet there’s more to do.  Didn’t see my friend who fought last Thursday’s blizzard.  Didn’t locate another to make sure he had Easter dinner somewhere and not alone.  Writing almost all got done, except to e-mail friends.  Telephone calls to family, D.C., Florida, and Spain.  Laughed with one whose hair is now all blonde because they didn’t know what highlighting meant in Spain.  They did, however, know better than her the language, and laughed when "Estoy mucho calore" in the heat of day meant locally announcing "I am horny."  And from D.C., not great news, but overcomeable.  Seattle and Philadelphia kids came home.  Seattle with a fella, a really neat fella, she has great taste in guys and this one’s a peach.  Philadelphia left his lovely girlfriend home to be with her own family.  We missed her here.

Now back to work, to run out in the rain and make a dozen stops between the drops of water.  And then to settle in my cozy nest and write the day away.

Old traditions are modified by generations, each fingerprinted by the hands that pass them down.  A little change, a twist on recipes written in a fading delicate script on fragile paper.  She’ll never know, we say, that we did not heat the sour cream first to yellow edges, it tastes the same.

The missing are missed and mentioned.  The toast dedicated to one who waits with hope.  The phone call comes, the news is hopeful, but not as good as what we really hoped.  We tell ourselves through tears it could be worse.  We say we’re lucky, and we almost can believe it. 

It is Easter Sunday, and we must rise as is tradition.

Happy, healthy, blessed Easter to one and all.  Remember a Man who did suffer and die for what He believed in, and for us all.

Am almost too tired to write.  Am body weary from a couple of ten-hour days standing in the shop.  Still have so much to do before Tuesday, and then from there on through the next week.  Some framing, but mostly writing, planning, stuff that needs doing. 

Looks like it’s going to be another late-nighter, but if I can get some things done that have been left hanging, it’ll at least offer some satisfaction of accomplishment.  Tommorrow, I’m going to try to relax with the family, at least for the afternoon.  Then, back to work.

Why pay full price for Peeps before Easter when you just poke holes in the cellophane anyway so they get hard and stale like you like them?

I still have almost all of my Easter "bonnets" from my church-going days.  Does anyone buy or sew pink suits for Easter Sunday anymore?

Can I talk my sister out of making me drive fifty miles with the pot of water I boiled the kielbasi in so we could make soup?

Olive-oil your hard boiled colored eggs–they look beautiful, especially the deeper colors on brown eggs.  And it’s fun to watch them slide out of everyone’s hands at the table.

Did my mother ever realize that the two expensive stuffed bunnies in the centerpiece were a gay couple?

Shall I bring a white lily to the cemetary in the snow?