April Snows Bring...

The snow out the window is a shot of the winter that will never end - in April...through the fog of a screen that's waiting to be opened!

We’re preparing for a big snowstorm this weekend. They’re saying it could be the most severe of the winter.

It’s April 12th and I shouldn’t be writing that sentence.

When we lived in California for a while, I used to laugh dismissively when people asked, “How could you live in a place with 6 month winters?”

“Ha!” I’d say. “Six month winters are so rare. Usually it’s three or four months of real winter, and the rest is extended fall or early spring.”

And here we have it. Winter 2017-2018 is coming in for a full six months long.

The spring that just won’t arrive. The winter that just won’t end.

I have not written in awhile – and that may be that this long winter is mirroring my level of gumption, as my grandfather used to call it. That “get up and go” that drives productivity has been mired in oatmeal-ly molasses this winter.

I’ve had to dig deep to push forward on projects that are usually creative energizers. Everything has been harder than it needs to be – more complicated, complex, and with multiple parts moving in odd directions.

At the same time, the weather of winter is just dragging on, hanging on, unable to cue to the signs of nature telling it that it’s time to move on. This is in spite of the sun’s position in the sky, the return of robins who are probably miffed they left the south, and several enterprising sprouts of green that will become popsicles by Sunday.

So today I write as a way to shake the impact of this winter – to reassert some pretend gumption until the real stuff returns.

And I’m putting it out here as a way to tell the universe that the time has come, the time is now to turn the nob on the seasons and bring us the spring that’s overdue.