The Songs of Spring

Good morning,

It's 50 degrees here this morning and there are low thin lines of ground fog, everywhere you look.  Up above the fog, there are clear skies, which spells another beauty of a day.  Yesterday, we broke yet another record, with the mercury hitting an incredible 81 degrees here on the prairie.

As I sit here typing, I hear that stupid ring-necked pheasant, making a huge racket.  Lately he's been in the ditch across the road, and he just sits in there by the mailbox and makes endless noise.  Yup, it's that time of year as he tries relentlessly to find a mate.  He's crooning for all of those ring-necked babes of the female persuasion, "Come see what I have here just for you, Hot Mama."   We women are fools for a man that croons and struts his stuff.  Thank God, my husband never resorted into believing that he had to sit in a ditch in order to fill his dance card.

So yesterday I was gone for much of the day.  Pool in the morning, and all afternoon I sat and played bridge with my friends.  The cards were nasty for everyone for most of the day.  It was a mighty struggle, there were precious few easy games, and the lead went back and forth.  Finally, we just raised our hands up in surrender, waved the white flag and called it quits.  My partner and I eked out the win, but really, we don't pay much attention to that stuff.  We just play and talk.  Or in yesterday's case, talk and then think about playing.

I came home and changed into my bright orange jump suit.

During the winter, my husband straps himself into Elmo the Tractor after most snowstorms, blows the snow from the driveway.  Sometimes I do it, but I have learned from experience that this yet another fine example of a man strutting his stuff.  There's something about a tractor (or any other big machine, for that matter) that makes a man get all full of himself.  Anyway, that stupid snowblower attachment takes stones and rocks and hurls them halfway across the yard, much like a catapult.  Zing, the chunks of granite fly gracefully through the air and disappear into mounds of freshly-fallen snow.  Every year, I plead with my husband to please, PLEASE raise the attachment up so that it doesn't scrap the stones from the driveway.  And each year, I receive the same grunt in return.  "If I don't get close, the snow left in the driveway will freeze and then we'll have ourselves an ice skating rink.  Is THAT what you want?"  And thus it becomes my job each and every spring to transform myself into the chain gang.    

I HATE raking rocks, and that is how I spent my late afternoon and early evening yesterday.  Thank God I had my IPod in my pocket and was able to be interrupted, playing Words With Friends with Carol.  I suppose prisoners aren't allowed to do this.  Anyway, raking rocks is REALLY hard work and I would much rather be gardening or mowing or even sitting in a ditch, doing just about anything else except raking rocks. 

Today, the heat continues and I just can't make myself go to my volunteer job at the nursing home.  That shall wait until tomorrow, when temperatures are supposed to dip to a mere 70 degrees.  Today, I shall find myself back outside, raking even more rocks, crooning "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child" and listening to that stupid pheasant as he also wails his song, waiting in hope of hearing a response to his springtime pleas.