Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Want my COFFEE!

From my bedroom window this morning, I could see four blooming trees -- two pink, one fluffy white, and one silver grey. But still no green. Not even the smallest little tips of new leaves. It's still March, though, so I guess I am being impatient.

Wednesday morning, and Principal Broker on vacation. It's class day, and Nameless Agent is teaching it --or presiding over it, since he got someone else to teach it, some mortgage dude. It's also scheuled to start an hour later than usual. Which has me feeling awkward and off balance. Make the coffee? Don't make the coffee? I'll wait until ten, but I WANT MY COFFEE!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Straighten that Curl!

Okay -- tell me if you think I am being an elitist snob about this. A woman that I know wanted to sell her haircare accessories and beauty products. She told me that she was selling her "hair curler that straightens." Thinking about that, I asked if it had interchangeable parts? You know, could you take the wand off and replace it with one of those flat things that straightens?

"No," she said, looking at me strangely, "It just straightens. It doesn't curl. I have curling irons for curling with."

"Oh," I said. "You called it a curler that straightens, is why I asked."

"It does," she said with exaggerated patience. "It straightens. That's what it does."

"But doesn't curl," I said, just making sure. "It's a curler that doesn't curl."

She walked away, giving me a wondering side-eye, and later showed me the ad she had printed up. It was headed, "Straightening Curler."

Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Hesitation Waltz

Today is one of those typically Spring-like days of gorgeous, sparkling hesitancy! The weather is doing the Hesitation Waltz. Right now the sun is shining in all its golden glory, the sky is blue, the clouds are white, it looks gorgeous and warm, but there is also the added sparkle and diamantine brilliance of all the droplets of water clinging to leaves, dancing on the edges of branches, flashing on windshields, because it just this minute stopped raining, and raining hard. Ooops, and there it goes again, sun disappeared behind a cloud, warmth gone, a cold grey sickliness overtaking the warmth and golden strength of just a moment ago. And I know it will happen again and again -- has all my life -- it's Springtime in Oregon!

Monday, March 7, 2011

Never-Changing Coming of Spring

Daffodils! Glowing golden clumps of daffodils in full bloom! I saw several this weekend on my few short trips out here and there. Spent most of the weekend in, though, cuz of my visit from Jeannette! Very nice to see her, and have her see my apartment, which was really, very nearly clean. Really. Very.

But yes -- lovely though it was to see Jeannette and talk over Joe's recent behavior with her, I was talking about daffodils and their gorgeous lemony-yellow trumpet flowers. There is a fat clump of them growing just a few feet from the entrance to my apartment building. I used to wonder about how they grew in clumps like that, wondering why people planted so many so closely together. But then I figured it out, after planting some myself. The bulbs split and spread. So if you have, say, three bulbs, planted neatly together in a small triangle, they will bloom like that for the first year or maybe two, but then one or all of the bulbs is going to split when it arouses itself from it's long winter nap. And the split could send up another few daffodils on the outer edge of the triangle, or into the midst of it. And then the next year, now that you have, say five daffodil bulbs, the split gives you, say eight. And then fourteen. And then twenty-six. So five years after you planted this small group of bulbs, you've suddenly got a very fat, tightly packed little crowd of bulbs, blooming like crazy, and all in this same small spot. More or less.

Anyway, I am very happy to know that they are out there. Very happy to know that my life is going to continue, like the never-changing coming of spring, until it ends, and then I will not be around to know it and will not be sad or miss anything, because I won't be around! To know it!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

So THAT's what I mean, when I say or I sing!

It is Saturday, and the first Saturday of the year that actually feels like Spring! It is not raining, the air has a slight buoyancy to it, just a bit of lift, a smell of Spring. The silly geese are building their (soi disant) nest on the roof below my balcony, which brings their loud and ridiculous mouths a lot closer to my ears than usual. This morning, as I lay in bed until seven-thirty (scandalous!) I could hear them as though they were in the bedroom with me, squawking repeatedly, on and on and on. Makes me really wish for a BB gun.

But! I am being distracted by geese and their stupid ways. Today is the first day of Spring! I know, I know, -- not technically, not legally! But REALLY! The camellias are blooming all over the place! The daphne is blooming! There will be hyacinths and daffodils and crocuses any minute! And it FEELS like Spring! For the first time this year. I was paying attention, this time! And I noticed it!