toooooo long

this winter is endless. i am sick of ice and boots. i am tired of all this white. i hate this cold. i yearn for melting, puddles, and temperatures in the forties. tiny bits of green coming up through the snow and popping out on branches. warm sun on my face.

remember my strategies for keeping my spirits up through the long month of january? next year i'm going to extend them for four additional weeks.

the beauty shop

this week i ran into two of my students, brothers, 8 and 11, at a most inopportune time - as i was arriving for my hair appointment. turns out they had their hair appointments then, too. what are the chances?

what ever happened to privacy in such places? time was when the "beauty parlor" was a woman's refuge - a place to go alone, to yak with your neighbors, to dish with your hairdresser. who cared if other women saw you with rollers in your hair or smelling like permanent solution? there was common ground there among women with the unspoken rule that what happened in the hair salon, stayed in the hair salon. except for the gossip, of course. 

then men were invited in. they came in such droves that numbers of barber shops dwindled considerably. no longer happy with a haircut, men were now invading sacred lady-spaces in search of hair styling. so women ran the risk of running into their ex-boyfriends or their bosses while they were being curled and dyed.

and now, children? what's a teacher to do? allow her students to see her sitting in a paisley plastic cape for twenty minutres with orange goop all over her head? or in one of those clear plastic shower-caps with the cotton all around the edges? or with bits of hair poking out all over her head and looking like a koosh ball?

perhaps i'll need to take my business far out of town. or become a l'oreal girl (because i'm worth it!) and get rid of my gray in the privacy of my home. or better yet, i could just have my stylist slick my wet hair straight back when students come by. then i could put on my best accent and convince them that they must be mistaken, that i'm not at all who they think i am.

and what did i do? i chose to leave. reschedule. i ran like the gray-haired, shaggy coward that i am.

politics

must political signs be this big? do politicians think i can't see them littering the lanscape so they just made them larger? do they honestly think that, after weeks and weeks of looking at roadways lined for miles with standard size vote-for-me signs, i'll think about voting for the candidate whose sign is the most detracting from the natural environment, the biggest eyesore? with this election, i'm noticing more and more of these oversized signs. i'm not impressed and i'll sure be glad to see them gone. ten more days til the new england countryside reverts to natural.

that said, don't forget to vote on november 2nd - oh wait, how could you forget? the signs reminding you are everywhere!

bah humbug 2010

today, october 2nd, the first day it's been chilly enough here to refer to the day as a typical fall one, i turn a corner in a large department store to view this: christmas 2010.

in a "normal" year, i notice holiday magazines have hit the newsstand by columbus day weekend. close to halloween, i typically hear the first too-early holiday music emanating from the tv in the living room as it plays in the background for a christmas promotion. but to have christmas this blatantly in my sight at the beginning of october is just wrong!

by my calculations, this display will be out for one-quarter of the year. at least they waited until i had a sweatshirt and socks on before they put it up.

the murder of crows

each morning this week i've tried to snap a photo of the raucous crows that have been waking me too early all summer long. screeching and shrill, they arrive at dawn to perch in trees around the yard. boldly, they swoop in and cover the lawn, squawking as they hi-step through the early morning dew. once this week, i awoke to rapid, rhythmic, incessant croaking. peering sleepily through the window i spied a young crow, jumping up and down in front of the blackberry bushes. with each screech, he hopped up and gobbled down a berry. needless to say, there are precious few left for us this year.

time was when crows were a harbinger of fall. a solemn, mournful sound that signaled the end of a summer. which was fine with me because i'm up early then anyway. but on cool july mornings, i love the indulgence of rolling over and closing my eyes for a few minutes more. not this year.

even though there are not yet any crisp fallen leaves with which to stuff the clothes, i'm thinking about making a scarecrow a little early this year.

spoiling the view

a few times a week, i pass this. a rag, i think. it's hanging off a tree at the top of someone's driveway. and i bet it's been there for a least a year now. what is it, do you suppose? a marker of some sort? a remnant from a rowdy party? something blown in by the wind? whatever it is, it's unsightly and i fight the urge each time to yank it down and throw it away. but i'm afraid if i act on the impulse, someone may go careening down the hill after missing the sloping driveway.

black flies

what is this, you say? it's my windshield, twenty-five miles from the car wash that i'd gone to thirty minutes previously. black flies splatter on the glass as i drive, each tiny body making a p-p-p sound as it hits. this spring, black flies are thick in the air around us, infiltrating our noses, entering our mouths as we talk, getting stuck in our ears and taking up residence under our hair at the back of the neck. dreadful little biting creatures, they'll only be around for a few more weeks, thank goodness. then the mosquitos will take over.

you're out!

tissues are used sparingly around here and i don't buy them often. but i do need to keep some on hand for guests, for the little girl, and for the occasional full-blown cold. when i do buy tissues, i get these little cubes because the small footprint works in my tiny bathroom. but the design of these containers drives me crazy. you can't see inside these cubes, you can't tell when you're getting low, and you never know when the tissue you pull may be the next to the last one. or even the last. inevitably, you're faced with this - the empty oval. maybe the tissue people should install counters on these boxes, so when you open the box and pull the first tissue, the counter changes from 130 to 129...and so on down to 1. at least that way you'd know around 15 that you should probably stock a new box.

wrong color, wrong season, wrong holiday!

see that spindly contraption of pastel pipe cleaners? i found it today on display at one of my favorite shops. it's an easter tree. an easter tree, for cryin' out loud!! the store even had little egg ornaments to hang from it, in addition to the easter baskets and bunnies and books. this christmas crossover is just too bizarre for me. decorate eggs at easter, yes - but not trees! is no tradition sacred? and what will they think of next??

merry columbus day

if it's columbus day weekend, can christmas be far behind? i purchased these at the post office this morning when i went in to buy forever stamps. the clerk told me holiday stamps were flying off the shelves and if i waited too much longer i might not be able to find any when it was time to send christmas cards. jeez.

have a nice day

with the events of this past week, i have become keenly aware of the frequent use of this phrase or one similar - have a good day, have a nice night, have a good weekend... i was counting the continual utterances, anticipating them even, when i finally gave up early on at number thirteen: have a good afternoon from the clerk at the florist's. i want to nose right up to those greeters and quietly reply that my mother has just passed away and to have a good day seems an impossible request just now, thank you very much. maybe private grief is not such a good thing. perhaps those folks with the black armbands were onto something.

too much, too soon

the local big box store has removed all its annuals and vegetables and, in their place, put out chrysanthemums. at the beginning of august, for heavens sake. what on earth are they thinking, particularly now that summer is finally here? i guess it could be worse. they could have put out pumpkins, too.

right on time

easter displays are abundant in the stores and they're right on time. today is ash wednesday and there are only six more weeks until easter. six more weeks. who can think about bunnies and duckies yet - with all this snow, all this cold, and all of march to still get through?