Sunshine mania

The days have been sunny recently.  In my neck of the woods, the sun is late in coming, hinting at warmth and springiness in half- to full-day spurts, then impishly retreating behind dripping clouds.  The routine is losing it's cute, let me tell you.  But, the past few days have been wonderful, enough to make soggy northwesterners like myself consider forgiving the old orb.

I wore shorts to the garden yesterday.  The sunglasses I wore were as much for the reflection off of my white white legs as for the sun above.  My sister from Florida reminds me frequently that 'brown fat is prettier than white fat'.  I just know white fat or white skinny is a shock when exposed for the first time in six months.  

In the stores, clerks are sporting pink cheeks and noses.  Farmer tans are laying their foundations with farmer pinks, soon to be followed by farmer peels.  Coworkers are wincing under hands laid gently on their shoulders.  Yep, spring is only a few days old and already we have to be retrained on sunscreen protocol.

The doctors are blazing through surgeries, everyone trying to extricate themselves from the bowels of the surgical unit while the sun is still out.  Makes me wonder if surgical errors increase in the Pacific northwest as the first sunny days occur...

Spring is making everyone and everything a little crazy.  One of the hens is broody, it only took one egg to get her that way.  She would not be dissuaded.  So, putting our heads together, my daughter, two nieces and myself came up with a few prize eggs we each wanted hatched and slipped them under her in the night.  She now has one of her own eggs, two miniature Call duck eggs, and seven Old English game eggs.  Imagine her brood when it hatches!  But, she won't care, and neither will the babies.  It's mostly people who get all concerned about that stuff.

George and I have resumed our decades old summer habit of meeting at the lawn swing in the evening, the one like a swinging sofa, to listen to the birds and catch up on the day until cold, darkness, or mosquitoes drive us inside.  We used to worry about the swing breaking with the weight of two or three kids, three dogs, a cat, and any other critter inclined to join.  Now, it is just us, and usually the old cat.  

As the seasons begin, reach their fullness, and wind down to rest and renew, so do our lives. That is what now is for my husband and I, a winding down for now.  I feel us poised on a burst of activity that will begin with his retirement.  We love to travel, and will do as much as we can. We will scuba dive in Baja again, fish in Alaska, ride quads everywhere, and hunt our legs off. 

But, for now, we are trying to sit quietly and finish up our obligations, launch our children with solid support, and build our resources for our second go at a busy life as a childless couple. (Patience, my ass, I want to kill something...)