15 April 2013

Spring has Sprung?

Spring is in the air, finally!  It's not that we had a hard winter, but it was long.  Or as I heard someone remark, "Winter wasn't long, but spring sure was cold!"  Now that we seem to have turned the corner, there is a change I can feel all over town.  People are absolutely in better moods, friendlier and everyone seems to have let out a collective sigh or relief.  Last year spoiled us.  It was so warm and there was so little snow that every time it snowed this year folks reacted as though we live in Florida or something.  Get over it!  We live in Ohio and winter lives!

I am wrapping up my first semester of school in over 25 years and it has gone well.  I've been a little stressed trying to balance everything, but all in all I was able to handle the work, (my biggest concern,) and although I let my fitness sorely slide, I feel as though I can restart that now that the weather is cooperating.  It will be good for me to get out walking again, which goes a long way towards helping my sanity, my sleep and my fitness.  I'm all about multitasking these days so that's a good thing to kill those three birds with one stone.

Dan and I have been spending some time gardening, and looking at the maintenance we need to do this year.  We are putting some things off, and others we are doing ourselves instead of hiring others to do the work.  Dan is affected by the sequestration, so he will have a little extra time, and a pay cut this summer.  We normally would have had a landscaper come in and do the spring clean up but a couple of days of work and we are almost finished.  Besides, there is something I find incredibly therapeutic about recreational pruning.  We are debating about the 7 yards of mulch.  We have a huge yard with a ton of beds and 7 yards of mulch is really a crazy amount of mulch for two people to spread.  Can we do without it?  Maybe.

Aside from being able to enjoy the great outdoors, hiking, walking and gardening, there is one other thing we love about spring - SPRING CLEANING! No, not us, but everybody else who does it and then has a garage sale. Dan and I love going to the garage sales/estate sales around here. While the sales further out in the suburbs are full of items like espresso machines, fitness equipment and five year old decorating looks, the sales in and around Oakwood are usually items collected over a lifetime and well used, and to us, vintage.

A few years back we hit an interesting garage sale and we might have spent about $20 total. I know we got a few things, one being some of the old "Think Different" ad posters put out by Apple in the 90's. That was maybe $10, ($5? I can't remember.) I thought they would make a good birthday present for my nephew the programmer, and so when his birthday rolled around the following year I sent them to him. He was appreciative, but did not have the wall space in his current house so he squirreled them away. This week he pulled them out to get them framed to use in his new flat. He wanted to see if all the posters were there or if he should maybe look on ebay to finish the set. As it turns out, it is a full set of ten unframed in pristine condition. Worth $2500. Happy Birthday indeed! I guess this means I'll never find that elusive copy of the Declaration of Independence or some Picasso sketches. Lightning never strikes twice, right? Right?????

You can tell by the tone of this post that I'm quite positive these days. It helps that my kitchen is flooded by sunshine, I see the light at the end of the semester, and Dan and the kids cleared out of here this morning leaving me to to my thoughts and serenity. There is something magical about the first few minutes after they all leave - even if I have to rush off to school, drinking the rest of my morning beverage in silence, even just five minutes, is restorative.