Hot Town.

I don't want to complain, and probably when I'm front-porched one of these daylight-savingsed afternoons watching the dogwood bloom a week and a half early, I won't, but there's something unnerving about this:

Friends and fans of the turn of season, it is March. Early March, at that. I have a third of a cord of wood left. Who knows when I'll need to burn a fire in the shed again? Do I need to get the upstairs A/C checked? Do we have Toad clothes for warm weather? Give me, give me, give me the good afternoons, OK? Let's even touch 65, touch 70. Lawn chairs. High Life Light. Dog in the grass. Toad in the mower gas, or whatever else deadly is nearby. But shouldn't I still need some kind of long-sleeved situation once the sun goes down? Shouldn't I still, in some way, have to prepare?

No winter. No real winter and now this. The Japanese magnolias are cranking up all over town, but their color doesn't seem quite right. The pink ones are dusty. This is like the autumns we get after killer Augusts. This is March without any true February. Mosquitoes—mosquitoes are what's next. We're all going to die. We're all going to die, and then there will be mosquitoes. I could take 77 degrees one day this week. One day would pull people blinking out into their yards to see what the hell was happening. One day would mean dragging the cooler up from the basement to revel in accident before the freezing rain arrived. March is supposed to tease you, supposed to offer up occasional glory. But give me six or ten days in the seventies, and it's not a show any more. It's not special. It's not impressive. It just feels trashy.