Spring Storm.

The above is a current-temp snapshot from 4 pm Friday, one way to look at the storm that blew through and landed us two beautiful crisp days and now this one, a low drizzly slog in the forties. Today's a Guilford County teacher workday, sadly and not sadly, meaning no preschool, and so no work in the shed, but also meaning a reasonably lovely Toadbound morning first at the Children's Museum (airplane, slide, fear of fire and mail trucks) and then at the little downtown pub that tries so hard. I want it to be slightly better, the pub, but I also partly want it to be a half-mile walk from some tube stop in out-of-the-way London, which makes me a simpering asswipe, so perhaps I should just shut up and be thankful. And they make a fine soup. Actually, more than one. As for the Friday storm, in case you missed it: beautiful, all the wind in the world, many untethered items blown around the front and back yard, a very thin line of storms at suppertime and then sun again, and those plummeting temperatures. Yes, it was thirty degrees colder in Jefferson than in Greensboro at 4. Yes, it was thirty degrees colder in Greensboro by nightfall.

They want to give us spring back, friends and fans of weather, beginning tomorrow. I've seen Japanese magnolias starting to bloom here and there. The daffodils may already be past peak. All of this is weeks and weeks early. Still, Friday, when it was so warm, when I had the double doors thrown wide open in the shed, when every now and then (and finally, finally) the sentences weren't like bloodletting, and when that good breeze blew, I felt ready. It's one thing to have a warm December and January, which we did. It's unearned, among other things. It's quasiapocalyptic. It's another, though, to make it to late February and have it snap springlike again. By then—by now—you start to feel a little readier. Maybe you shouldn't, but you do.