"Eyes!" declares Lil' Snip with a grin, pointing. "Hide! Gasses!!"
My eyes are indeed hiding behind glasses these days as the pollen flies thick and my contacts betray me by delivering the miniscule bits straight to my eyeballs, grinding like sand, regardless of whether I'm inside or out. I who have weathered many a miserable spring due to increasingly severe allergies should despise this season violently, but how can I?
The crabapple blossoms float down in the breeze like fragrant snowflakes, layering their round pink petals over porch, walks, and grass like so many cloaks spread for a triumphal entry. We walk on pale pink, happy for such fairy litter, and sweep away the withered ones only to make room for fresh.
Spice wants to start a log book of flowers in bloom, by month, and was about to give it up, discouraged that so many had already opened - crocus, daffodil, bluebell, star magnolia, hyacinth, primrose, bleeding heart, tulip, crabapple - when I remind her of all the flowers yet to come: dogwood, columbine, lilac, lavender, iris, daylily, rose, daisy, peony, crepe myrtle, gladiola, hosta, and so many more. She smiles and heads out to document her favorites.
Walking alongside her mother, a neighbor child picks a bouquet for me, dandelions and some small white wildflower. I plop it in a pint milkbottle leftover from the dairy days here, and the roadside posy disarms me with its charm.
Even the trees offer blooms - not just the crabapple and the flowering almond, the dogwood and the orchard trees, but the maples, too, have their contribution. "It smells like a perfumer's shop down there under the silver maple," Spice tells me, rapturous.
Among so many beauties, how could I let mere physical symptoms get me down? I can choose which I will see, and today, at least, I will see spring instead of sneezes.
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spring. Show all posts
a season for slowing down?
Sometimes, it's helpful to know what's coming around again.
I know in advance that Christmas drives me crazy with unrealized ideals, so I can plan for that (well, I could plan for that, in an ideal world - heheh, irony intended) by doing my shopping early, scheduling times of quiet meditation, planning meaningful family traditions, etc.
Spring allergies have often kept me indoors and miserable, so I can plan ahead to take medicine or herbal remedies (or whatever I think might work that year).
When a birthday is approaching, I can take steps to be prepared with a cake, presents, a special meal.
Thanks to this blog, now I am beginning to catch on to another pattern. I evidently suffer from Early Spring Slump. Not an official diagnosis as far as I know, but pretty real in my experience.
For the last couple of months I have been fighting against discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement ... repeat ad nauseum.
But because I blogged about it last year, when I began to sink into it this year, it felt just familiar enough for me to think, "hmmmmmm...." before collapsing on the sofa for a nap, yet another unfinished project silently accusing me from the corner.
As you may have guessed from reading this blog, life for me doesn't always sink in until I've written about it, which I guess means that vast quantities of my life's hours are lost in Never-Never Land, since who has time to write it all out? not me; I've got naps to take. So despite having this Early Spring Slump for years, I usually chalked it up to various other random causes including allergies, postpartum blues, and major life changes. It took blogging about it to wake me up.
Realizing that it's a cycle doesn't exactly make it enjoyable, but when I read last year's post about it, it did give me hope that it will end (which I kind of suspected, anyway, since I remember a respectable amount of productivity happening between then and now...namely the unfinished projects actually having gotten started).
All the helpful advice in the world (and believe me, I have gotten some) hasn't gotten me jumping for joy between January and March. I just plow through.
Kind of like I'm doing with this blog post, actually. I don't see a tidy end to it, but I assume that, like this early spring slump, it will somehow end. Last year my slump evidently ended around (or before?) my post on March 22.
I've got two days.
I know in advance that Christmas drives me crazy with unrealized ideals, so I can plan for that (well, I could plan for that, in an ideal world - heheh, irony intended) by doing my shopping early, scheduling times of quiet meditation, planning meaningful family traditions, etc.
Spring allergies have often kept me indoors and miserable, so I can plan ahead to take medicine or herbal remedies (or whatever I think might work that year).
When a birthday is approaching, I can take steps to be prepared with a cake, presents, a special meal.
Thanks to this blog, now I am beginning to catch on to another pattern. I evidently suffer from Early Spring Slump. Not an official diagnosis as far as I know, but pretty real in my experience.
For the last couple of months I have been fighting against discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement, despair, tearful mornings, fatigue, hopelessness, self-criticism, discouragement ... repeat ad nauseum.
But because I blogged about it last year, when I began to sink into it this year, it felt just familiar enough for me to think, "hmmmmmm...." before collapsing on the sofa for a nap, yet another unfinished project silently accusing me from the corner.
As you may have guessed from reading this blog, life for me doesn't always sink in until I've written about it, which I guess means that vast quantities of my life's hours are lost in Never-Never Land, since who has time to write it all out? not me; I've got naps to take. So despite having this Early Spring Slump for years, I usually chalked it up to various other random causes including allergies, postpartum blues, and major life changes. It took blogging about it to wake me up.
Realizing that it's a cycle doesn't exactly make it enjoyable, but when I read last year's post about it, it did give me hope that it will end (which I kind of suspected, anyway, since I remember a respectable amount of productivity happening between then and now...namely the unfinished projects actually having gotten started).
All the helpful advice in the world (and believe me, I have gotten some) hasn't gotten me jumping for joy between January and March. I just plow through.
Kind of like I'm doing with this blog post, actually. I don't see a tidy end to it, but I assume that, like this early spring slump, it will somehow end. Last year my slump evidently ended around (or before?) my post on March 22.
I've got two days.
fresh air
It's officially spring, and with my favorite season come some decidedly unfavorite things: allergies and post-winter slumps.
What to do about allergies? Drink raw milk. Consume nettles (as tea, or blanched like spinach). Fast. Avoid sugar and refined starches. Saline nasal spray (*shudder*). Neti pot (*double shudder*). Exercise. Avoid contact with pollen (i.e. stay inside, windows closed, all the beautiful season long). If all else fails, surrender to the wonder of modern medicine and dose yourself (you know what I mean - see your doctor for an Rx) with whatever chemicals will do the trick.
The post-winter slump, though, is the real kicker: the worst of winter is over, you've had a few sunny, springlike days, flowers are starting to poke through the warming soil, and your to-do list soars optimistically .... and then, bam! you find yourself sitting around listlessly wondering what happened and what will make it go away. Perky friends exhort you to go outside and enjoy the sunshine! Go for a walk! But you can't seem to find the motivation to get out of the recliner to see if they're right.
Food loses its appeal. Books or movies are just a vehicle to get you to the end of another day. Sleep offers scant respite. Hour plods after hour ..... It all feels vaguely familiar; will it ever end?
And then one morning ...
What to do about allergies? Drink raw milk. Consume nettles (as tea, or blanched like spinach). Fast. Avoid sugar and refined starches. Saline nasal spray (*shudder*). Neti pot (*double shudder*). Exercise. Avoid contact with pollen (i.e. stay inside, windows closed, all the beautiful season long). If all else fails, surrender to the wonder of modern medicine and dose yourself (you know what I mean - see your doctor for an Rx) with whatever chemicals will do the trick.
The post-winter slump, though, is the real kicker: the worst of winter is over, you've had a few sunny, springlike days, flowers are starting to poke through the warming soil, and your to-do list soars optimistically .... and then, bam! you find yourself sitting around listlessly wondering what happened and what will make it go away. Perky friends exhort you to go outside and enjoy the sunshine! Go for a walk! But you can't seem to find the motivation to get out of the recliner to see if they're right.
Food loses its appeal. Books or movies are just a vehicle to get you to the end of another day. Sleep offers scant respite. Hour plods after hour ..... It all feels vaguely familiar; will it ever end?
Days pass this way.
And then one morning ...
... you wake up and find your mind working again. You think of things to do and - voila! - do them! And it's not an effort anymore. You clean. You cook. You look at people with interest and answer them with a smile that involves more than just your mouth muscles.
What has changed?! The weather is no nicer and no nastier. The chores are no less onerous than before. Your friends have not suddenly blossomed into brilliant comedians. But the slump is over. It's a gift.
Quick! Don't analyze it - just go and live while the living's good!
"The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all." Mark Twain (apologies to Socrates).
What has changed?! The weather is no nicer and no nastier. The chores are no less onerous than before. Your friends have not suddenly blossomed into brilliant comedians. But the slump is over. It's a gift.
Quick! Don't analyze it - just go and live while the living's good!
"The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all." Mark Twain (apologies to Socrates).
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