Awake

Drab day outside my window

leaves me curled into blanket nook

of dreams

ah, yes
   to dream, to dream

I dream of sunshine,

flowers wriggling through cool earth

fighting to gain topside

As we all do

  on a day like today

gray

Colour my world in sunshine

paint my world without tears.

of grief and passing,

I do tire.

Let Spring vault

higher

far higher than

the dirth in earth outside

For I am tired

Friday Fun

   I have read a few blogs that have much fun with days of the week. There are Project Mondays and Free-for-all Fridays over at Notions and Threads. Tree Huggin Tuesdays and Feature Fridays grace the pages of Hip Mountain Mama. My good friend Is That a Promise of a Threat? even discovered Friday Follow at One 2 Try. They are all so inspiring, but my Fridays never look like that. Typically on Friday we are lucky if we are dressed by lunch time.

This is what my living room looked like this morning.

This was it last Friday around 10:30 am.

   Today, if I can tear myself away from the computer, we are inspired and out the door early. I leave behind the ghost fort that the girls created this morning and take to the road. We are off to Grandma's house to wreak havoc on her world. She started it with the temptation of crab legs. unnnnhhhhh, yum! So I applaud all of you who are crafty and creative, but Friday I am in love with Chaos.  And the road calls, so carry on...

Spring is in the air...

   The windows are opened to let in the tentative days of spring. Lunch has been eaten outdoors twice this week and the barbeque has come alive in even-time. Patches of snow still spot the yard, but more soggy grass is evident every day. While I long to shout "Spring has sprung!" from the rooftops and garden beds, I wait. It is still early March after all. My cautious Canadian brain wags its finger at me, forewarning a spring squall or two to come. Planting season is still eons off, as the rule of thumb is not to plant til May 2-4. Temptation is strong though in my pale green fingers. Discussions of spring cleanup in yards gave animation to talk over lunch. Oh yes! It is coming. One friend added to the list of additional places to get my hands dirty gives me a giddy grin. How many additional gardens can I reach my hand into this year? For today though I make do with the delicate breeze wrought from the Earth's tilt to the sun. Craning our necks we all reach for it. I don't have shorts unpacked just yet, and cannot quite bring myself to put away the winter jacket, but it is coming. Oh yes, Spring is in the air...

I Remember...

Memories:

 *Splashing in huge puddles at the side of the road as we walked home from school in spring/summer. We would yell to the passing cars to "speed up" and "splash us! splash us!" laughing madly every time we got soaked to the skin. Truly a dirty little experience and dirty little memory, but a smile drifts in...

*The smell of fresh bread baking in Grandma's kitchen was enough to make any soul salivate, with little hands and faces plastered to the oven door to watch the golden goodness rise to its full glory. Any leftover dough (and Grandma always made sure there was a little left over for her googly-eyed Grandkids) was transformed into fried treats sprinkled with sugar. We thought we had died and gone to heaven...

*Staring up into my Mother's spent face as she explained that my Father had died. Our vigil was over. This was my time to say goodbye, before life moved on. Standing at the side of the bed I stared. My five year-old brain did not have the words to say a thing. I stared and stared. Life moved on...

*Sitting in the back of a speeding big rig in nowhere Namibia wondering what had possessed me to think that hitch-hiking was okay, and safe, and a good idea? Screaming to my guardian angels to please, please, PLEASE help me out of this one. "One day I would grow up and realize that I wasn't indestructible and if I could just get this little favour and end up outside of this truck in one piece mentally and physically, I would Learn!" One scary lesson to learn from those said angels. Thank you

*Having wave after wave of the worst pain I had ever experienced slam into me. Looking up into my husband's eyes knowing that just his presence alone was enough for me to keep going. Wanting release, but not wanting to give up for me and for the baby inside of me. The blessed bundle ratcheting my pelvis into a position it felt appropriate regardless of my physiology. Knowing that I could do it, despite everything my body tried to connive me into. And doing it. Breathing with wide-open eyes as the miracle of life was bestowed upon me. A shared moment of love with this man. This man that I had walked with, talked with and now created with. We made life eternal in the form of a tiny human girl. My touch with perfection and the pristine pool of pure love.

*Opening up the newspaper and seeing my face and my name perched beside an article written by my hand. Knowing that I had received my five minutes of fame by reaching out to touch the world with a picture that I could share of me to whomever was willing to read. And knowing that people read, cared and liked what I had to offer, even going so far as a brief TV time slot. Pride and fame are mine...

*Taking my two girls by hand and walking with them into the future. Approaching the building that represents their start of tomorrow, their independence. Breathing smiles into me and my progeny. We have been one. Love binds us together. Trust must let me walk beside them for a distance

    and then wave goodbye...

School starts September.

Change comes eternal for me and you

Never stand in way

Burgers are up!

    Sunshine heralded the first picnic of the season. Rather early I'd say, but with the sunshine filling wintry eyes and warming pastie multi-layered skin it was a must. Left-over soup was less palatable with weather demanding fresh fare plucked from the garden. As nothing will grow in March mush and snow, I acquiesced  and opted for water to fill me up instead. Topped off with a cookie or two for good measure (beware those of you with peanut allergies -Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk sated my sins). Tempting as it was to uncover tender tootsies to the air, I made do with sock-clad sandals. Aghast as I would be to see such fare in mid-summer, it pleased me on this Tuesday in early March. I banished the thoughts that more snow will undoubtedly fall before winter wearily wends its way out of existence.

   Spring is in the air! Shorts are on the runners and bicycles have been bouncing down the boulevards of my life this week. It cannot be denied. So with those uplifting thoughts, I pulled into my driveway this evening and headed straight for the barbeque. It was time. I lit a match and watched flames leap across cold, cold burners. Burning the winter winds away takes time, but I scraped off memories of chilly nights. A New Day was upon me. If I could whistle I would have been full of tunes. Alas that skill has never been fostered, so I hum te dum daaed in the waning day.

 "Sizzle, Hiss, Sizzle, spizzle, spit..."

  "Burgers are up! Grubs on for my first bbq of spring"