I am thinking of spring.  It seems the only thing to do as the white stuff falls and falls and falls.  Last summer I built a small garden late in the season and was still able to have handfuls of grape tomatoes and watch the sunflowers bloom.  I also had a couple of eggplants and some sweet banana peppers for stuffing, a recipe I will perfect this year.  I dream of doubling the little plot so that there can be a zucchini and some lettuce.  More pots of herbs are planned for the patio.  That will be fragrant and fun.  Of course there is always the pot of marigolds.  I am allowed to do whatever I want with the flower beds – ahhhh.  So off with the layers and layers of mulch and on with new top soil.  Maybe roses along the side where the sun pounds all day.  A clematis to add some height in the front.  I am not a gardener, really.  Don’t know much about any of it even though I grew up on a farm.  I prefer the indoor work.
I like the housework of spring.  Really.  I take pleasure in washing walls and changing curtains and bed spreads and inhaling a house full of the freshness of open windows and cleanliness.  Please don’t misunderstand this as being a job I consider to be the sole purview of women.  I don’t.  I honestly LIKE housework.  No, my friends, I am not for hire.  Nonetheless, I dream of spring.  I think much of this dreaming is the result of being cooped up with THE BACK and missing the movement and exercise, the physicality of the work – whether garden or house.  I long for the mornings of dawn at 5 a.m. and walking the dogs without the encumbrance of jackets and boots and gloves and hats and heavy coats.  Winter weighs so much.  Spring is lighter, requiring more and less at the same time.
I remember the arrival of the seed catalogs when I was little.  Even though I had not much interest, there was beauty and anticipation that arrived with Gurneys and Burpees and Jackson-Perkins.  Indeed, I smiled when I was out shopping last week and saw the beginnings of spring in the racks of seeds in local stores.  Maybe radishes?  And onion sets?  Hmmmm.
And so it goes.

The snow plow rumbled past the bedroom window.
I looked across the bedroom and Bonnie pricked up her ears -
“Out?  Time for out?”
I looked at my watch -
Almost 5 a.m.  Might as well get up and start the day.
We wandered downstairs, flipped on the coffee,
and then the three of us stood in the early morning white world.
6 inches at most.
Not bad.
So much for a snow day.
Came in, gave the dogs their treats, poured coffee, tuned in NPR.
Hey!  Where’s Morning Edition? Look at clock on computer.
3:53?
?
Look at watch.
3:54.
Look at kitchen clock.
3:55.
Oh for crying out loud!  It’s 4 a.m.  What on earth am I thinking.  Back to sleep.  Toss.  Turn.  Nope.  Not happening.
It is going to be a very long day.
And so it goes.

First the meanderings -
Thanks for the advice about bikes.  I think I will go to Dick’s to start.  It feels like the midway point between just buying something at K-Mart or going to a specialty shop.
It seems rather silly to be sitting here like a grade school child waiting for the snow to start at 7 a.m.  Oh how I hope the weather people are right and we are going to get buried today and tonight.  This from the person who doesn’t have to travel anywhere…
Pain is the strangest thing.  It can become the complete and total focus of one’s life in the blink of an eye.  But I promised no more of that and I meant it.
And now the magazines -
I grew up in a house that did not subscribe to typical magazines.  Mother took The Nation which is hardly Woman’s Day.  It was impossible for me to do those elementary school assignments that involved cutting out picture from magazines to match the letters of the alphabet or find pictures of 10 mammals or whatever.  In fact, when the children were small I actually subscribed to Redbook just so they could complete those sorts of assignments without being embarrassed.  I’ve no idea why I chose Redbook except that I liked some of their fiction better than that published in other magazines.  Now, without young children at home, I borrow magazines from the library.  Most of the time, I grab Vegetarian Times, Woman’s Day, and Martha Stewart Living to glance through recipes and crafty ideas for young children.  Eating and work – yeah.  A friend got me a subscription to Vanity Fair and I scoff and browse and scoff as I browse, but I admit that it’s fun to look at the models and Annie Leibovitz’s photographs.  A guilty pleasure.  All of that being said there is one magazine that I read cover to cover every month – drum roll please….

The Sun Magazine is an ad free literary magazine that is positively brilliant.  The cover photos are always enticing.  The black and white layout is rare and beautiful in this colorized, apps-for-everything world. The poetry is generally powerful and carefully crafted.  There is always an informational interview with a little heard of expert about the environment or the human condition or the psyche.  Politics become personal in this little diamond of a publication.  The photographs – all black and white – invite one to look deeply, not only at the photograph but at the wider world.  Take a look at it the next time you’re at the book store.  Invite your library to purchase a subscription and then borrow it. I love this one enough to subscribe to it because it is one of those pieces that won’t go to recycling but will have its own shelf so it can be revisited again and again.

And so it goes.

We didn’t get enough snow to close anything.  That’s a disappointment.
I could take another day – the ER folks gave me two on my return to work slip.  Part of me thinks I should tough this out, and the rest of me is so darn sick of being house bound that I am going to venture in to work, sore or not.  I need a change of scenery.
The tramadol made me sick as a dog so there will be no more of that.  Still taking the super strength ibuprofen which helps as much as anything.  I am done talking about this back thing now.  How incredibly boring for all involved!  I am fascinated though by how quickly one can become hyper-focused on not feeling well when one has been relatively healthy.  I should be kinder to my body.
If I cared about football at all I would be tickled pink that the Saints won the Superbowl.  I am a huge supporter of the underdog.
I am contemplating what bike to buy in the spring.  Any suggestions?  I just want something to cruise back and forth to work on and perhaps take the dogs on trail rides now and then,  Is there one bike that will do both? 
And so it goes.

This American Life on NPR is one of my favorite programs EVER.  The story rebroadcast this afternoon is wonderful.  Sit around the radio and listen:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=199

Boring health update:
Tramadol made me sick.  Done with that. 
High powered ibuprofen and a heating pad seem to be doing the trick.
Feeling much better and like a baby but I will take care and be careful.
Back to reading and crocheting.
And so it goes.

I am generally healthy individual.  I have worked with kids for so long that it is rare that I get the colds and yucks that the little and large pumpkins pass around.  Thus it is rare that I trundle off to the emergency room or doctor for much of anything.  My back was in such bad shape for two days that I was convinced there was something else wrong and this went to the ER after a lunch meeting on Friday.  A CT scan revealed nothing and it was all deemed a pulled muscle.  I haven’t had a pulled muscle, torn something that brought me to tears in years and usually it is an ankle that gets twisted and torn.  Finally, after 24 hours of muscle relaxants and mega doses of Ibuprofen, I can stand up straight and walk with only twinges of pain.  Sitting is still a problem so I won’t be writing much because my typing while lying down is less than attractive.  However I did manage to take the trash out and make coffee this morning.  For once, though, I won’t push it.  This being in pain stuff is not fun at all and I will take care until it heals.  Rest, drugs, rest, drugs.  A boring life but there it is.  I should be fine by tomorrow.
And so it goes.

I am broken.  Pulled muscles in lower back.  Went to ER yesterday and was given pain meds that impede typing.  Back when I can focus.  This is incredibly annoying.
And so it goes.

It was one of those nights…
You know the kind
not awake enough to do anything
but not quiet enough to sleep.
Whatever waking up
looks like on those morning afters
that’s what I did
still exhausted.

I am in favor of removable body parts.
In my younger years
I thought it would be clever
if reproductive organs
could be removed until one
wanted or needed them.
Now I would like to remove
my mind and put it in a jug by the bed.

Some would suggest
I leave it in the jug by the bed.

And so it goes.

On October 2, 2006 Charles Roberts shot and killed 5 school girls, wounded others and then took his own life in a one room school house in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  That’s the short of it.  However, the long of it is far more complicated than that.  What struck us, the society at large, most was the reaction of the people of the Nickel Mines.  Forgiveness is as a much a part of the daily life of these Old Order Amish as breathing.  Many, indeed most of us wondered how they could forgive a crime of such violence and magnitude.  The media, of course, had a feeding frenzy.  Pundits felt compelled to comment either positively or negatively on the “healthiness” of this forgiveness.
The book Amish Grace:How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (Kraybill, Nolt, Weaver-Zercher, John Wiley and Sons, 2007) “explores the many questions the story raises about the religious beliefs that led the Amish to forgive so quickly.  In a world where religion spawns so much violence and vengeance, the surprising act of Amish forgiveness begs for deeper consideration.”  Forgiveness seems easy on the surface, but it isn’t.  I wrestle with it in my daily life.  Especially now.  There are moments when I find the peace that comes with forgiveness and slowly but surely they come closer together than they used to.  This book was not a quick read for me.  I picked it up, read a few pages, and then put it down as I absorbed the words, their meanings and implications.  There are lessons here although they are not meant to be lessons but rather explanations of one community’s, one culture’s response to tragedy.  This is a community in which “presence” and “being present” are tangible activities.  They are not meant to “fix things” because indeed there is no fixing.  This is a community that does not publicly tear its hair or rend its garments but instead goes about daily life and finds peace in the routine of that and comfort in the very definition that is community. 
I don’t buy many books.  I only buy the ones I want to write in and read over again.  I won’t return this one to the library until I have my own copy.  There is much here to think about.  How different would life look if we forgave rather than sought vengeance?  How would it look if we did not seek retribution?  How would it look if we hoped without expectations?  What is justice and how should it be made manifest?  The answers for the Amish lie in their faith and their community and their Ordnung.  That is their way.  And for someone, who like me, is seeking, this volume illuminates a path, shows where the boulders are and invites me to find my own way around them.