Today has been all about fighting my natural inclination toward sloth. After dropping off AJ at school, I should have gone home to do some writing. Instead, I crawled under the covers and attempted (unsuccessfully, as luck would have it) to take a nap. Finally, the phone rang, dragging me out of bed, a metaphorical shaking by the scruff of the neck. I plugged into my iPod, turned the music up, and went outside for a jolt of cold air, in hopes that it would wake me up. I grabbed my pruning shears and headed to the side yard to check on the pussy willow tree. It was full of fuzzy little pussy toes. I clipped a few branches for the house and then a few branches off the forsythia formerly known as the Hairy Behemoth, but which has been tamed into several civilized bushes by Mr. Spy. The forcing of forsythia blooms in warm water was always one of the magical moments of my childhood springs. We had forsythias in several of our yards and my mother would always bring in naked bunches of sticks and plunge them in vases of warm water. Three days later, they would be covered with yellow blossoms. The gesture, which I replicate each year, has always seemed to me to be symbolic of the hopefulness of spring.

After that, I went on a cleaning frenzy. The house has been in a state of disaster, what with the flood in the basement and the mud everywhere and the fact that we decided to take a pre-vacation vacation this weekend with some friends who have a cabin in Michigan on the lake. The cleaning, or perhaps the aromatic cleaning fluids, were therapeutic and I was in a much better humor before I plunged back into the once-again wintry air to pick AJ up. AJ is now upstairs playing with The Girl Next Door�s brother. I have no idea what they are doing, but every now and then great gales of giggling ripple through the house. It is highly satisfactory.

4 people said it like they meant it