Will Winter Never End?

It was warm today. Finally in the 50s. It's supposed to be up and down temp-wise all week. Today was lovely, well, rainy, but a bit of a tease wrt spring's arrival.

This evening Ethan and I walked around the yard, picking up sticks and throwing them into the woods. I took a look at the areas where there are bulbs to see how they're doing. Some of the daffs that Ethan and I planted last year near the northeast corner of the library are starting to come up, as are the daffs at the back of the house that have been there forever. Not much else peeking out yet.

There is still snow on at least half the yard. Another day or two like this and it should leave all but the deepest shadows.

I was thinking that we were way behind with flowering, but I just took a look at my notebook from 2001 (the last time I kept track), and it looks like crocuses didn't come up until the beginning of April. Although, tomorrow is April 1, so we're getting close. My entry for April 9, 2001:

Crocuses begin flowering. Yellow along sidewalk, purple to east of garage door.

4/13/01: Daffodils flowering.

4/20/01: Iris dwarf reticulata begin flowering. Hyacinths and grape hyacinths coming up.

Etc., etc.,.....

I know that I need to be Present, be in Now, not what happened in previous years. Especially since there's not a darn thing I can do about the weather. I will enjoy them when they appear.

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I've already decided that I need to dig up the stumps from the shrubs we cut down in the back of the house last year. I want to plant the butterfly garden there (the one I ordered from Michigan Bulb), and I don't think it will have its best start with those stumps in place. So, as soon as the ground is diggable, I'll be out there with a shovel. And then compost.....

New reading

I've been reading A New Earth, and participating in (well, watching) Oprah and Eckhart Tolle's online class for the book. It's pretty interesting. Am I becoming more enlightened? Hard to say. I suppose that Tolle would say that if I said that I were, it would just be the ego speaking, and I wouldn't really be any more enlightened.

Thoughts on recent migraines

I just had a glorious week and a half (thereabouts) off for Christmas and New Year, along with Russ and Will and Ethan. Overall, it was fabulous. I really didn't want to go back to work. There were a few instances of wanting to lock the boys in separate rooms, when they just wouldn't leave each other alone, but other than that, things were great.

Except, I had a pesky migraine for much of the time. Around Tuesday (last day of vacation), I fingered the walnuts I'd been sprinkling on my oatmeal and my lunchtime salads. Yesterday, my first day back at work (and my first day of not sleeping in, I might add), was headache free. Hmmm.... Perhaps I shouldn't have blamed the nuts. Maybe the culprit was keeping my lazy ass in bed until 8:00 every morning.

Of course, I will look for any reason to keep nuts in my life. The edible kind, not the human kind. The human kind I can do without, thank you very much. Dare I reintroduce nuts if I promise to keep a normal sleep schedule? Please, oh please?

New anti-smoking campaign

Yesterday I ended up staying home with Will. We were getting gas at the full-service gas station, where there was a big ad for Camel cigarettes. Will, who is reading everything these days, asked me why the sign said "Camel." I explained that it was a brand of cigarettes, and I said, "And cigarettes are bad, and you will never, ever smoke them, right?"

And he said, "No, because they turn your lungs black, and then they fall out, and then you die."

So, there you go. Anti-smoking according to a five-year-old.

Oh, my aching head!

What the heck is up with my head? I've had a migraine, to some extent, since Monday morning. This truly sucks. I finally called the neurologist this morning, and he's calling in a prescription for some sort of steroid that I guess will knock this thing out of my head. I need to call Target to see if they got it.

Time to call Target.....