i call it the greening. it happens every year. its over now here. here is ohio, the tri state part of ohio that intersects with pa and wv. i used to live in wv, the last flood two years ago did me in on that one.  i had a wonderful old victorian home. it was three stories and full of memories. unfortunately, after the flood, it was also full of crossbred snakes. eeeek.

i am not afraid of snakes, per se. but i also am not totally crazy about them. i could live the entire rest of my life never seeing a snake and i wouldn't miss it more than, oh, the bubonic plague for instance. so the old homestead had to go. now i live in a brand new modular home. i love modular homes.  they are so tacky, yet so convenient.  if they could make them out of plastic, i am sure they would.  all the windows work and none of them are broken. in my old house of 27 windows, six were broken.  the a/c works. the dishwasher works. everything works. well, the family still thinks the dishwasher is a funny looking cabinet, and never loads their dishes without being told, but you'll have that.

i live in the middle of a converted cow pasture, with a view of a lake from my front porch. i am not ON the lake. probably a good thing as my last threat was to go and FIND a lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, then i was going to explore the possibility that I was a LIME and spend a week or so throwing myself in and out of the gin and tonic.  an author i love once wrote about that. he is dead now. and missed. sorely.

the greening. well the greening is when everything is brown. thats when it starts.  and if you are not very careful, you will miss it.  it is that ineffable moment when the dry, cracked, brown, dead things of winter push out their little green heads and taste the warm sunshine.  they taste it and say to themselves, hey!! its not too cold out there ! and a bud appears on an apple tree. or a stalk of soybeans pushes up through the damp, dark earth, reaching up towards the sun.

there was a LOT of years when i didn't even realize that there WAS a greening. oh. i noticed that all of a sudden, we went from brown to green.  everyone notices that.  you are driving down the interstate one day and your brain finally registers.         green.          there are things around me that are green.  very green. weren't those things just brown a day ago?

thats just normal notice.  no, the GREENING is when you catch the first little bud coming out, the first leaves poking up.  and it's slick. and tricky. and hard to catch.  it never comes when you think it should either.  its also difficult to see if you drive alot.  it is not conducive to try to spot a bud on a tree limb from the interstate at 65 mph. you can well, get in wrecks and have other horrible things happen.

 

i do stupid things like that alot. not get in wrecks and have horrible things happen. well, sometimes horrible things happen, but that is just the perverse nature of life. nothing personal. at least i don't THINK it is personal. maybe it is?? wow. what a thought. let's NOT go there right now.

no, the stupid things i do are called (by me) quests. i have really bonker quests.  things that absolutely no one else has ever (to my knowledge) done.  like wonder what the letters ASPLUNDH on the side of the bright orange trucks that you see on the highway cutting down trees, well, what do the letters stand for.  i started questing way before the internet. (gak, that makes me OLD doesn't it?) so it wasn't something that i could just grab a cuppa when i got home, head to the puter and look up. no. a quest had to be solved. why did i make up stupid rules for my quests? don't have a clue there. but there are rules nonetheless. and they must be followed.  it took me exactly three years and two months, seventeen days to solve the ASPLUNDH quest.  the answer? bet you'd like to know <grin>.

it does give me things to think about on my commute. i live in the country, i shouldn't even have a commute. but i do. its about 25 minutes. that's a funny thing too.  when i drive the POS mini van i paid a whopping $300 for last winter, i tend to listen to country. i don't even LIKE country, but i listen to it in the mini van.

now with gas as high as it is, i pulled the grand am out of retirement. the grand am is a stick. and a 4 cylinder. i happen to love driving a standard. i made all three girls learn to drive a stick. they hated learning, love driving one. i have been driving it two whole days. i put a whopping $20 in the tank. 7.16 gallons. wheeooo.  now in the minivan i spent $10 a day on gas. ouch.  and i drove about 70 miles a day.  i have driven 160 miles on the grand am and still have HALF the gas left that i put in.  fuzzy math, but i know that my mileage is better.

i like driving the grand am alot better. i listen to classic rock in the grand am. couldn't PAY me to listen to country in the grand am. today, crusing down the interstate, i had War Pigs by Black Sabbath cranked up. how funny is that. a 51 year old woman rocking out to war pigs.

you know, i walked by a mirror the other day and saw my aunt in it. i don't know how she got there, she has been dead for years. it wasn't supposed to be like that. inside i am still somewhere in my twenties. i don't know WHO this old hag is that took over my body.  

i've aged. i know it. time does that. and kids. kids will age you. trust me. i know. i have four of them. the oldest is 29ish or so. yep. and the baby is 17 ½. and we are now raising two of our granddaughters, ages 3 and 6. that's a long story. it involves dropping out of college, marriage way to early, and king heroin. sad, but true.

funny part is, there are lots like me out there. with regards to that situation. there are some really good bits about it though. laughter of a three year old and toothpaste on cats. watching them grow and develop.  it's not exactly what i envisoned at 50, but it will do just fine. just perfectly fine. i'm good with that.