Yep, it's here! Much like Martha, I've been spending the better part of the past couple of weeks planting seeds and photographing flowers. I managed to cut back and repot many of my houseplants in anticipation of their annual move back to the front porch in a couple of weeks. In the meantime my little seedlings are sprouting away on my windowsills and a few have even been moved up to little pots from their eggshell starter homes. The peppers seemed to lag behind a bit, but since I moved them to the mantel above the heater a few days ago, they're busted through the soil as well.
And on top of it all, I seem to have regained something of a social life. I'm the first one to use cold or rain as an excuse to not leave the house, and as a result, I've had little face-to-face contact with the world beyond my immediate neighborhood for much of the past three months! Things appear to be changing.... I actually made it out to an art opening Friday evening with my pals Jim & Kenneth. We swilled wine, rubbed elbows, & spouted sarcastic amongst some pretty cool stuff that included a day-glo painting of a patterned monster shooting a neon rainbow out of its naughty bits, a meticulously displayed collection of drain clogs and pissed-on copper tiles gone green, a series of pearl necklace-strewn flesh-colored latex chest casts overseen by a couple of lovely ladies clad in translucent gauze, and a hot-air balloon performance/sculpture that wandered around the reception area propelled by a pair of human legs.
By the time we made it back to the house, Charles was home from the office and settled into schoolwork while me & the boys spent the rest of the evening around the dining room table eating leftover gumbo, tossing back Sailor Jerry n' tea, and pouring over recent issues of Country Living and Saveur. My guests had left by midnight, but apparently I was just getting started....
[Insert backstory: About a week earlier, I caught Charles humming "The Meatball Song" (a.k.a. "On Top of Spaghetti") and decided to chime in. Keep in mind that carrying a tune is a Sisyphean task for me and when compelled to perform, I tend to turn to comedic overdramatization. Charles petered out somewhere in the third verse but I carried on and on and on in a mock opera performance that left him stunned. This is what passes for romance in our marriage and I may as well have serenaded him with an aria from La Traviata—every couple of days afterwards, he'd sweetly ask me to sing the meatball song. Somewhere along the line, while enjoying my second cup of Sailor Jerry n' tea in the tub a few days later, I hatched a plan to perform an interpretive dance to the Meatball Song. I worked it all out in my head giggling along the way and managed to forget about it, until.....]
This is what happens when I relaunch myself into society after a long winter's nap! Possibly inspired by the creative energy and overdue human contact of the evening, I decided it was my turn. I mentioned my rum-inspired performance aspirations to Charles and he jumped on it, immediately reaching for the camera and egging me on. Needless to say, I was hung over and barely remembered the performance the next morning. By the time I made it out of bed and on to brunch, Charles had already gone into the office and showed the video to his coworkers! I gotta admit it's humiliatingly hilarious, especially since I crap out during the last verse and forget the words. My husband is determined to post it to YouTube, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go viral yet....
With that hovering over my head, I've managed to carry on. Though I've been thoroughly occupied by cleaning up and cutting back around my garden, I'd realized I hadn't attended to such tasks around my own being! This finally hit me during yoga class the other day when, while in downward facing dog, I glanced over to see a small forest sprouting from my armpit and looked back to realized my feet & ankles had gone Sasquatch. Though I'm not a particularly hairy person, I truly believe that at some point in my ancestry a Hobbit & a fairy must've gotten freaky—somewhere around mid-calf, my legs break into fur and tufts of inch-long hairs sprout out of each big toe (this must explain my long-standing celebrity crush on Chewbacca). It's not exactly something I keep on top of during the winter months as the only time I'm apt to put on a skirt is if someone gets married, someone dies, or the temps soar into the upper '90s. I'm pretty sure the last time my legs had seen a blade was in early December when the spaghetti-strapped minidress I wore to a wedding required some ladyscaping. I figure with temps in the '70s, I'm likely to bust out the cargo shorts & flip-flops soon enough, so I set aside a good hour of tub time and went through three blades tackling the issues. I'll be submitting the drain clog to an upcoming art exhibit....
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