Spring is in the Air

By Starla Kaye

Spring, spring, spring! Such a lovely thing. Look, I’m a poet. Okay, no. But I do get excited about spring.

For my mother, spring always meant it was time to fully clean the house. It meant she went through every cabinet, closet, nook and cranny. She relentlessly nagged my dad about cleaning out the garage. And you absolutely went outside and washed all of the windows.

I’m NOT my mother. I thoroughly clean house (not the extremes of every nook and cranny) when I have company coming. Not that I have a trash-filled home, but you might be able to swipe your finger across a lot of surfaces and find dust on most days. My husband only uses the car to drive his car inside. It’s basically my domain along with the house. So, no, I don’t feel compelled to clean it unless I’m looking for something. And the outside windows. Really? Isn’t nature supposed to take care of that problem?

Spring for me means I get out my cushions for the patio furniture. It means I snag my laptop and move my writing base outside. Well, some of the time anyway. I live in Kansas where there is almost constant wind, sometimes much worse than others. I can’t even keep a bird house hanging on my patio without it eventually being ripped off and blown down the street. But there are days when I can sit out there and let my mind run free, let my fingers fly, and happily type away for a couple of hours at least. Or I can have peace there until these stupid tiny birds decide to invade my space. I swear they aren’t around there until they see me settled in MY space. Then they basically dive bomb me, insisting I abandon the area and go back inside. Did I mention stupid birds! Don’t give me that line about me being bigger than them. They can be really a pain in the patootie.

What else do I love about spring? I can stop limiting my exercise to the stationary bicycle in my living room or working out to my Zumba DVDs. Of course I don’t go all crazy at either of those pursuits. But occasionally when I think of them, I’ll sweat away for a good half hour. Whew! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

When the out of doors calls me for more exercise, I load up my golf clubs in my CRV and hit the road. I drag my sister (on rare occasions my husband) to the nearest golf course. We rent a cart because we don’t want too much exercise. Walking the course? Seriously? When there are perfectly good driving carts to rent? Sometimes, though, I think it would have been safer to go that route. My sister insists on driving and you’d think we were in the Indi 500 or something. I hang on for dear life when she takes a corner at warp speed. It’s a good thing I love her.

Love. That’s another great thing about spring. Now I can write stories involving that magical time of romantic love in the spring of the year. I’m even plotting one out now. I’m ahead of my time. Spring isn’t for another eight days when this blog post comes out.

Happy spring to you all!

CONTEST: Leave a comment about your favorite things about spring (or least favorite). One lucky person will receive a fun little notebook to take with you for writing down quick notes.