Shifting Pattern.

Warm enough this morning to ride in to the puppet show with the truck windows down. And it wasn't warm-warm, and by the time we picked up the front spitting edge of our rain showers this evening it had gone in fact cool, but we may have turned a corner here. Do not worry: it will snow in March. We'll catch an azalea freeze in April, as we always do, everybody's front lawns blanketed and sheeted over. It'll be twenty-something tomorrow night, even. But: that rain tonight, that dogwalk this morning, those daffodils six and eight inches out of the ground now out there at the 27244 and back here home in the 27401—we're coming, we're coming, we're coming. Every day the shadow of the house slides back closer to the house, gives us back our summer lawn. Today I wore a shirt out of the other season's closet.

Here's what I could almost smell today: that first evening beer on the front porch, the thing you can taste when you leave the office and line the left tire up with the yellow line on 70 and aim back toward home. The mint coming out of the ground. The dog readier to get out of the bed and come downstairs to greet you. The high blue dome of sky. Spring. Somehow it seems like I want it more this year than I ever have before.