Keep Off.

A stunning day, frankly. Winds out of the west at oh, I don't know, five to ten miles an hour. Gusts to something more than that, sometimes appreciably more. Enough to send wind through the house west to east. Enough to knock the crows around some while they chase the hawks. Sunny, for the most part. And seventy-three degrees. A free day. A piece of late April dropped down into February. Another day of this and I'd wring my hands, freak out about the state of the planet. I should be doing that today. But I can't. It's just so damn beautiful out there. I think I'm going to have daffodils by the weekend.

Big storms are supposed to track through tomorrow and scrub us clean of this, send us back a little closer to what we deserve and what we need. Somewhere out there in the forecast is a low of 20. But damn, damn, damn.

Took the dog a little further afield than normal, and came across a gentleman who's seemingly lost his temper a wee bit: four signs hammered down into his yard, white posterboard, hurried orange marker: LET YOUR DOG DUMP AT YOUR PLACE. DON'T LIKE CLEANING UP AFTER YOUR DOG? NEITHER DO I. TIRED OF CLEANING UP AFTER HIM? SO'S YOUR NEIGHBOR. TAKE 'EM HOME. Can't you just see the gritted teeth? The self-righteous standing in line at the orange marker store? He couldn't take it any more, I guess. I'm sympathetic: I get my own jeans in knots over barking dogs, over kids dribbling basketballs too near my flowerbeds. But I try to keep myself one step back from the ledge. You don't, I don't think, want to advertise to your neighbors just how close you are to freaking right the hell out. I don't, anyway. I'll do my best to keep my jackshit insane self a secret. A partial secret, at least.

Days like this help. Hard to get mad on a day like today. Hell, if someone's dog was shitting in my yard right this minute, I might even let them.

Sometimes when I'm teaching on days like this I'll walk into the classroom and just say, Have you been outside today? Seems like a lot of them sometimes don't get what I mean. Easy to go outside without going outside. People can't see the yard for the dogshit. Something like that. I'm going back outside.