The Megastore recommends, spring for real edition.

like these.

1. Red shoes. People, we have come through, just about, a long and justly wintry winter. And I am
not tempting the weather gods--see, I said 'just about,' so I know--we still have some bluster and sleet and whatnot. Plenty of rain, and so forth.

Still: don't tell me you're not tired of those heavy boots and sturdy waterproof shoes you've been wearing. Your feet want a little dancing. They want lightness. In a word, they want red.

Red shoes are pretty much the most reliable of the frivolous shoe colors. Red is elemental. Since it's elemental, I say we all decide it's a neutral. Let's all buy new sneakers, red ones, and wear them with everything. Sneakers have the virtue of being practical, but red sneakers? lightweight ones? they will serve your dancing and lightness needs with aplomb.

basically, like this, but
with pancakes.

2. Eating breakfast with the door open. Sure, you might not have a kitchen that opens to the outside, but maybe you have access to a window? The day is still young, the chill is still in the air, but the light is starting to filter through the leaves, and that light, that light is the reason. You know that light is both particle and wave. It is material, my friends, and there is no good reason in this world, when the chill is forecasting a later warmth, that you should not eat your oatmeal with some of that material light adding savor to the whole deal. Just try it. And for heaven's sake, wear a sweater.





3. Inspecting the yard. Did you know that your tulips are cutting

this is LITERALLY happening right now.

through the dirt? and probably, also, your crocuses? Also, that little project over there in the corner of the yard, the one you didn't finish last October? Still needs to be finished. But hey, the rose canes are reddening and the leaves are just about to pop. Not to mention all that blue flax. Things are happening out there--you don't want to miss it!

so close!
(dave mcmanus,
'brokenwing resting,'
on flickr)

4. Spring break. Shhhhhhhh--can you hear it? It's getting closer. Super close. Almost here. I know this is counterintuitive, but I think I can literally taste it.

Things that will be arriving at my house soon.

1. A new mattress.  I woke up this Sunday morning with various unfriendly aches round about my elbows, shoulders, and hips. I thought, This mattress cannot stand, man, and said aloud to the historian, 'We need a new mattress.' with great firmness.

He said, 'Well, then, we better get one,' because this was not our first rodeo, in terms of discussing the need for a new mattress. So I arose from my bed of affliction and went to the internet, where I bought a mattress, as people do.

It is arriving tomorrow. I am setting aside the notion that correlation does not imply causation, i.e., a new mattress may or may not be the cure for the various unfriendly aches. But I hope that it will. I believe that it will. I will keep you posted.

2. A grandson, to make little notebooks. My daughter texted me the other day about the third grade store at my grandson's school: 'They can make or bring something to sell and they can buy each other's things with classroom dollars. He was wondering if you could help him make mini notebooks to sell.'  

Well, of course I can! We discussed possible ideas for the notebook covers: raccoons, since the raccoon is the mascot of the school; stuff that kids that age like...

3. Paper and stuff for these mini-notebooks. With raccoons, stuff that kids that age like, etc.

4. Time to get the yard in order. I am personally laser-focused on pruning all the roses. ALLLL the roses.

5. Several shirts. You guys, I am possible stress-ordering stuff online.

6. Some sort of cookie. These will not exactly arrive, so much as emanate. Perhaps not so much emanate as bake. Not so much bake as be eaten, probably.

7. Spring break. It is coming. It is coming so hard!

8. Manuscript edits. These are currently arriving in the form of brainwaves about things like whether certain poems need to find their emotional core, or dig deeper, or whether certain other poems actually rise to the occasion, or whether they have served their purpose by having been written and now can retire?

9. A hiatus in grading. Frankly, this cannot arrive soon enough.

10. Peace, quiet, a new attitude. Ditto the above.

Working on getting ready to get ready to work on my manuscript.

That's what spring break is for.

Thus far:

all the words in my manuscript, minus acknowledgements, Table of Contents, epigraph, title. 

As it turns out, I use a lot of similes. Apparently.

In other news, I wore this yesterday:

Outfit of the Day, Monochrome Division.

This was a successful outfit, in my opinion, in that the hem of the jacket and the hem of the dress rhymed, structurally, in their flippiness, and also the polka dots of the scarf added whimsy.

Today, I wore a bright yellow sweater that I had to go look for in my Auxiliary Sweater Box (TM) because I have too many sweaters to actually keep track of, apparently. I also pulled out one of my favorite spring scarves. That's because today was light filled and glorious. It was peerless. It felt like spring.

It is not yet spring (I keep telling myself before I start going barelegged out into the still-winter). But it felt like it today. It feels like it.

In other other news: yesterday I had a quick afternoon respite with two granddaughters while their mom went to the dentist. It also was glorious and peerless:

Ballerina Gwen

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Feb 24, 2016 at 12:53pm PST

Naomi

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Feb 24, 2016 at 12:53pm PST

And tomorrow is Publication Studies, where we'll talk to our chapbook contest winner and start to develop the ideas for the plan that will turn that manuscript into a book. Just twenty two minutes until it's Friday. Things are looking up.

Light.

(which is, I guess, a big theme with me.)

I didn't realize that we were springing forward today until, like, yesterday. The springing forward always feels like a kind of theft, because it's sleep, really, that's gone. One whole hour of it. 

A friend on FB said, "I just watched the clock go from 1:59 to 3:00, and I'm furious about it." Friend on FB, I feel you, I really really do. 

However. This morning, I got up, and it was a little before nine-ish. Not too shabby. And I made some oatmeal and read the paper and there was plenty of light outside. We took Bruiser for a slightly longer, slightly spring-y walk. All right, okay, things were going swimmingly.

I settled in to work for awhile. Worked away till it was lunchtime. Made some lunch, did some laundry. Worked a little while longer. Took a glorious, precisely mid-afternoon nap. Sun streamed in the window.

 Got up, worked a little longer. Finished the laundry. Decided on dinner. Meanwhile, the Jazz won their game against the Nets. There was broccoli romanesco and peppers and onion, roasted, and sliced yellow cherry tomatoes, to go on the noodles. And parmesan, finely and freshly grated. And it was still light outside. Still light.

 All of a sudden, after dinner walks with ever less heavy wrappings start to seem possible.

 Spring forward, you're all right.

Ten things to do when you have finished the grading.

1. Lie down. You really should. You deserve it. Lie down and finish your novel, or if you are not reading a novel, start one.

2. Review your agenda. In my case, the agenda is entitled, The Get the House in Order Project, and it was wildly ambitious. Some of the stuff on that agenda--that stuff can be done later. Maybe in a few weeks. Resume your lie-down.

3. Okay, fine, get up. Think about dinner. Make soup and make blueberry scones because there are (a) blueberries in the refrigerator and (b) no reasons necessary to make scones if they are delicious and you want to. (check out the butter technique in that recipe--it is legit.)

4. Read some more. Take a short nap.

5. Watch tons and tons and tons of basketball. Revel in both the sloppy and the elegant play of the post-season, especially when you have no horse in the race, no dog in that fight, no team that you particularly care to root for. Learn other teams' players' names. Root for a team that is almost certain to lose to either (a) the Spurs or (b) Miami, depending on which part of the tournament you're prognosticating.

6. Read the nice comments students sent you. Remind yourself that you only had to wrangle with just one student, and even there, the wrangle was civil and is now resolved. Forget about the time when you woke up thinking about said student. Just let that go.

7. Sort through your winter clothes and put them away. Remind yourself how many freaking sweaters you have, not to mention skirts. Make vows about shopping, vows that will no doubt be fruitless but which feel salutary whilst putting the sweaters, not to mention skirts, away for the season.

8. Catch up on the last few episodes of The Mindy Project. This can be done concurrently with nearly any item above, but is worth enjoying on its own. However, eating a scone while watching television will never go amiss.

9. Think about China. China China China!

10. Put off decisions about meetings and commitments. They are out there, calling to you in faint, distant voices. But they can wait. They can wait while you open the windows (figuratively--it's still a little chilly) of your summer life and let the wind chimes make a beautiful, apt music, a music that is spring and the end of grading and the taking in of a deep, expansive breath. Breathe it. Just--breathe.

Monday.

Some observations:

Watching a Jazz game, which I almost never do deliberately because now, like so many pleasurable things, it stresses me out unless the conditions are just right. Triple overtime. The Mavs. The Jazz are playing with skill and joy and, it must be said, a little bit erratically, because they are the Jazz at this moment in their history. But they're up by 5 with 1:08. Jason Terry is ridiculous.

I finished a truly epic bout of Big Responding in my composition classes. In the history of responding ordeals, this is one of the most ordealiest. But I have prevailed over it. I feel the better for it.

As I drove to work this morning, I found myself listening in, as it were, on my own inner discussion with myself. I found that I was happy.

Soon I will be talking to students only about small scale revisions. And poetry. Soon I will be accepting the final version of their work. Soon I will be finishing this and moving on to that.

There is a full-on riot of tulips in my front yard.

I have loved writing the couplets for this month's gesture at poetry every day. It has felt increasingly like a meditation.

And the Jazz--on this beautiful Monday, the Jazz win it.

This part of spring is really almost over.

A couplet-less day. Two tomorrow?

Happy Easter.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

gerard manley hopkins

[couplet]

Evening lights.

honey-locust progresses apace.

Today in pictures.

this is the test print. it worked.
we will have a chapbook.

Today began with struggle: to get up, to get motivated for the day, to fit in all the things that needed to happen in class. When you meet just one day a way, and you're in the thick of a project, sometimes your so-called "lesson plan" is as grass, in the Biblical sense, i.e., it is toast.

But then, sometimes good things come of the lesson plan
that came to naught. For instance, the layout works and the students talking to the printer make the transition from layout to document that will print the way it's supposed to. Which means that we have a go on our thick project, i.e., we have a chapbook.

"I triumphed over Adobe."

This is the person who made the layout work. She is a student and she has a bright future ahead of her.

The bright sun signifies that things
got a little hazy. You can see that, right?

Now, after that triumph, things get hazy. I know I ate a sandwich, and I know I went to a meeting, and then another meeting. I also know that I went to Tulie and had a cookie with an old friend, and then I drove downtown to have dinner with the historian. And then: a movie.

We saw Salmon Fishing on the Yemen. It was basically Big Miracle, but on the Yemen. With salmon instead of whales. Frankly, I loved it. Don't judge. Ewan MacGregor = good.

who knows what manner of false blossom? 

Also, it is spring. Which makes all of the above feel a little more blissful.

Spring light and dark and snow.

Bruiser is fascinating, just fascinating. 

two noble profiles.

construction.

tickle.

what do these tags say, exactly? 

orchid. 

spring snow. 

spring snow, some more.

I love spring snow, I just love it.

Winter/spring.

Today, I just bought, on sale, a walnut-colored corduroy jacket, and I am pretty stoked about it. That said, corduroy is a fall-ish, winter-ish fabric. Ditto walnut as a color. When the jacket gets here in, like, a week, there will be even less of winter left than there is now. Today, after having spent roughly from 8 a.m to 4 p.m. in my window-less office, talking (and not-talking--curse you, you no-shows!) to students, I walked out and it was raining. The sidewalks were wet. Winter rain, or early spring rain? or pre-spring rain? I tell you, I think I could feel the thin, raw edge of spring, even though it kind of started to snow on the way home. But just a little. Maybe a spring snow? That's a thing, right?

Is it May yet?

It kind of feels like it, and I am in the process of checking out entirely of the current moment, except to notice the crocuses, sunshine, light, and also the trees leafing out.

I bought some fabric about an eon ago because I have another life, a secret life, possibly a life that only exists in my brain, where I sew. Why? I don't know. But this week, I sewed three skirts. By hand. With a needle and thread. Why? I don't know. It felt like the right thing to do.

Also, I bought a sack full of orange dye because I need orange pants. Orange-orange, not salmon or peach or coral. So look out for orange pants, coming to a theater near you.

I am ready for a movie and also I would like to put away my heavy sweaters.