Daffodils, Cherries, and Outdoor Seating at Happy Hour

This morning I was thinking about entering a contest to win a virtual crate full of spring & summer reads over on Jen Lancaster’s blog.  All I had to do to enter was leave a brief response as to my favorite thing about spring.  Sounds easy.  But this is me so of course I sat there staring at the comment submission box for like ten minutes.

I grappled with what I really love about spring.  I analyzed exactly what makes spring so great.  What do I really and truly love about the return of plants and all that stuff?  I wanted it to sound genuine whether that turned out to be a witty reply or not.  I wanted to sound like I understood the assignment deep in my soul but without rambling on and on.

There would be plenty of room to do that over here.

Why I did all of that analyzing, I have no idea.  It isn’t as if saying ‘brandy in a bathing suit’ or ‘flowers sprouting’ or ‘having sex without a comforter’ or ‘lemonade’ would generate any different of a response.  Not from her or any of the other people leaving comments.  Not like she’s going to give a hoot what I say.  At the contest deadline she’ll go to random.org and throw in the final count, click ‘generate’ then report the winning entry.

We don’t have to make her laugh to win.  We don’t have to be awesome to win.  We just have to say something.  I could’ve said ‘everything’ and it would have been just as valid as saying ‘rainbows that shoot out of a Leprechaun’s ass after a warm desert rain’.

What the heck is my problem?  Could I be more of a dork?  Haven’t I already gone through this recoculousness once before with this woman?

Anyway, I entered by answering with the exact words of my title.  It’s still a little fun but also it is exactly what I genuinely like about spring’s return.

So then that got me thinking.  (Gee, shocker huh?  Yeah, I know.)  It got me thinking about all the other stuff that’s cool about this season.  The end of hockey season, the return of baseball, Matt’s birthday, beginning to plan trips (this year it’s the Lake, former years included the Martha’s Vineyard annual adventure), windows down in the car, returning temperatures and sunshine, etc.

This year also has me looking forward to new stuff like getting my first tattoo, receiving the title to my car because its paid off (the first ever woo hoo!), a first spring in a new state, buying and moving into our new home, and of course releasing my first book Ripple the Twine. (Pre-order your copy today and save, just click on the book title here or go to the Buy Now button on the left sidebar! <-- I should add ‘shameless self-promotion’ to my list of spring favorites but that pretty much takes place all year long so…)

In Phoenix we’re lucky enough to have temperatures that don’t go much below 60 degrees at any time of year so we’ve been hanging out with the windows open for well over a month now.  Last night in fact, for the first time this year, we actually had to kick on the air conditioner for about an hour.  It had gone up into the mid-90’s yesterday so an hour of regulation didn’t seem all that odd.  The fact that it’s early April had me struggling to wrap my head around the concept though, I’ll admit.

But I’m not in the northeast anymore so I guess I should just go with it.

Kind of like when I got the hell over myself and posted as commenter 1345 over on Lancaster’s blog. 

Fingers crossed, I could use some good reading this season.