Thursday, February 10, 2011

Warmer Pattern?

So I'm watching Van Denton on the local Fox affiliate—people, I'm sorry, but I will watch any local weather, and though I do now and will forever keep Lanie Pope (NBC) number one in my heart and on my radio dial, I don't at all distrust either Eric Chilton (CBS) or Van Denton (has he had work done?)—and Mr. Van Denton did say that outside of today and tomorrow, he doesn't think we've got much in the way of frigid left... for the month.

What to make of this? Do I say, after-the-fact (or forecast), that even though the semi-late-night dog-out saw the ground either refrozen or nearly so, it felt less like winter out there and more like something else, that I was afraid to say so until after the early late news? Does that sentence hold? Is the late news late if it's on at ten? Has Van Denton had work done?

(That sentence does not hold. Or did not. I tried to fix it and became exhausted. Take it or do not take it. It is like Super Supper, a hated meal of my childhood. Our argument: We hate it. My mother's argument: It has all the things you like in it. Still it was awful. Ground beef and Ro-Tel topped with boxed mashed potatoes and sadness.)

It is late. It is cold. It was cold all day, and yet the light looked better, the ground got soft midday, even with the snow, and there was the idea of this weekend planting the downhill mouse's Christmas gift blueberries, still languishing in their pots, standing there on the front walk like the rebuke that they are to my sense of industry, or gratitude—

Let's do this, Weatherheads: Let's say that it should probably not be sixty in February with any regularity, but if they want to give us three or six days of that in the next fifteen, then dear sweet baby Jesus in a canister of cashews let's take it. Plant. Dig. Pull the gutters off the daffodil bed back there in the corner. What gutters? The leftovers from the shed, six or sixteen months in. It is all like this, all the projects. Bring a Toad in and see what you get done. Except: People everywhere get more done than we do, than I do, and with two toads, or three. I could not get it done before, and I cannot get it done now, and it is neither worse nor better. If it's got 28 days, then that's how much I'll get in under the wire. Same same 31. I make the deadline. I file on the 15th. I buy cards on the 14th. That's coming. Maybe buy flowers. Find a professional. Nothing's blooming here except the winter jasmine/forsythia (I can never tell the difference) on the corner. I tried to show the Toad this on the way home yesterday. He was having not much of it. Maybe if it warms up, he'll take notice.

2 comments:

Kathryn Frances Walker said...

super supper has always killed me.

Drew Perry said...

not so super, is the thing.