All right, let's try this again.

(At an intersection just north of Beausejour, Manitoba, Springy G looks out the window of a westbound bus and sees a flock of confused and disgruntled geese standing around in a cold, swampy, unseasonably snowy field)

"Um... Do you suppose it would help if I declared it to be spring?"

"Wouldn't hurt.  Here; use the microphone."

Wait, what?  Oh, what the heck...

*click* *tap tap tap* "Can you hear Me?  I hereby declare it to be spring."

(Cheering from the back of the bus)

As the Æsir and Vanir are My witnesses, the above incident happened at about 6:00 this evening as the Northwinds and Westwood concert bands were returning from the biannual Community Band Festival in Pinawa, Manitoba.  I first attended this event in 2011, and there were some uncanny parallels.  In both cases, the bus left Winnipeg during a storm and returned just as the sky began to clear and a pale yellow disc of sun could be seen behind the clouds.

In fact, the sun looked identical to the way I remembered it from 2011.  Spooky...

In other news, George the Dragon is still under a snowbank but expects to work his way out by next weekend.  Stay tuned, and don't put away those snow shovels just yet.

Putting a trace on spring

(Springy G gulps down Her tea, pulls on Her coat and rushes out to the front steps to see in the new season)

In My capacity as the Goddess of the Northern Hemisphere Vernal Equinox, I hereby declare it to be spr...

...Oh, dear.

George, are you okay down there?

*mmmf*

Don't worry, luv -- They must've lost the shipment.  I'll see if I can get a tracking number and get this razzafracking season underway.

To all aficionadi of the Vernal Equinox, may you have a good one... And may your gardens (and dragons) be easier to find than Mine was.

Only in Canada, you say? Pity.

So there I was, driving north on St. James Street just after 10:00 this evening, coming back from Thursday night band rehearsal.  I had a clarinet in a knapsack and 3 bags of groceries, including some chicken for the Cajun Fried Rice, er, Jambalaya I was making this evening.

I had the radio tuned to CBC Radio 1, and I was listening to the opening of the show Q.  For those of you unfamiliar with the program, this is a great all-purpose show for die-hard culture geeks.  Tonight the topics were tennis and gluten-free diets... But first, the affable host Jian Ghomeshi had his opening rant.  Today's topic was the recent vote among Monopoly fans to oust the clothes iron token in favour of a little metal cat.

I was already giggling when Jian was envisioning a future wherein Monopoly players would just hang onto their old favourite token and tote them around to games anyway.  He proceeded to posit possible alternatives for fans of the clothes iron, including using the thimble, the hat or the shoe to keep with the "clothes" theme, or adopting the Scotty dog in an act of defiance.

Then I rounded the corner onto St. Matthews, with a Hooters restaurant on one side of the road and the old football stadium on the other:  Scylla and Charybdis, except that the carcass of Charybdis had already been stripped for parts.  At that moment, Mr. Ghomeshi -- Who had been alternately scolding and pleading with Hasbro, delivered the line "What did the iron ever do to you?"

In a perfect storm of surreality, lulz and culture shock, I just lost it.

I love this town!

A toast to 'Thirteen

Welcome to 2013!  No matter what you encounter this year, may you face it with imagination, ingenuity and good humour, and surprise yourself by living life in unexpected and enjoyable ways.

---

Photo by Red.

Rabbit Transit

Or, "Is that a carrot in Your purse, or are You just glad to see me?"

When I gave Red a lift home on Friday night after the Yule party, I got to meet this wonderful little guy:

This adorable little bunny was found earlier in the day, in a cardboard box on the front steps of the building where Red lives.  It was quite cold on Friday -- Much too cold to be sitting in a cardboard box.

The rabbit got to spend the night at Red's place, and Saturday morning was successfully transferred to an animal shelter.

Along with the carrot that I had in My purse, as Red had run out of fresh veggies.

The Karma Faerie says she'll balance the other half of the equation in due course.

Kindness is... Doing one thing at a time.

A few days ago, as I went into My usual pre-holiday panic, I had an opportunity to do a brief meditation on the subject of kindness.  In particular, My thoughts turned to kindness towards oneself, and how often it gets put on the back burner (and, on occasion, off the stove altogether, out the back door and down the stairs).

At this time of year, the mood at Astrejurhof tends to be a bit lively for all the wrong reasons.  Some people's seasonal traditions involve putting up ornaments.  Mine generally involve some noble but questionable attempt to do an Extreme Makeover on the entire house, starting at the last possible minute and going into double overtime... Or until I collapse in a corner in a sweaty, cursing heap with paint in My hair and a back pocket full of drywall screws.

Drywall screws are very sharp things to sit on, by the way.

This year, things were just a little bit different.  I still spent an inordinate amount of time running around to lumberyards, and on more than one occasion caught Myself mucking about with drywall mud at a quarter after one in the morning.  I did, however, make a bit of progress in the kindness department with this one simple aphorism:

The greatest kindness you can show yourself is to take things one at a time.

Stay in the moment, and stay with what you're doing.  Multitasking is worse than useless -- It's evil.  In fact, it's technically impossible.  At best, it's task-switching; at worst, it's abandoning work in progress to start something that may not even need to be done.

The more it sunk in, the more I tried to make it work.  Mix one batch of cookie dough before starting another batch.  Take that box all the way to where it's going, instead of leaving it on top of the shoe rack till later.  Finish sanding the corner of the wall all the way to the floor, then do the next corner.

It works.

It works very, very well.

Best of all, I was able to make more realistic time estimates and know which projects not to start.  When My Yule party went 'live' this evening, I didn't have a half-installed electric fireplace in the living room or a pile of lumber on the front porch, but I did have this:

Gleðileg Jól to one and all!

---

Photo by Red.

Negotiating with My Inner Lizard

This has been a Lizard kind of week.

While mindfully eating a peanut butter sandwich the other day, trying to actually taste the bread and peanut butter rather than just scarfing it down and running back to My desk, it occurred to Me that there's a simple reason that so many humans struggle with their weight.

It's the lizard brain -- Or more specifically, the Amygdala.  That's the snap-judgment, one-punch-away-from-a-riot, emo part of the brain that seems to be hungry a lot of the time.  Last night, for instance, it decided that it desperately needed cream cheese and crackers at 1:30 a.m.  (Earlier in the evening I'd made it sit through Mahler's 7th Symphony, so turnabout is fair play.)

It did get Me thinking, though:  Until we get this Lizard Brain thing under control, we're at a distinct disadvantage.  Seriously, how does one reason with a functional, evolved part of one's own brain that only seems to speak Chocolate?

Don't worry, though; I'm on it.  I speak Chocolate very well.

In other news, I have a fresh tube of 5-minute epoxy (O nectar of the Construction Gods!)  and have successfully re-glued 2 plastic lizards to My office wall.  That makes 13 of the little dudes, plus 2 metal ones.

I also have some mini-lights on a lizard theme, but I haven't strung them up yet.  If you happen to know of a holiday that celebrates lizards, please let Me know; otherwise, I fear I'm about to craft a new Yule tradition.

No matter what My amygdala has to say about it.