I didn't know what to do ...

... when spring returned for a teasing visit yesterday here in northeastern Ohio. The temperature reached 65--the sun was out most of the day. As Richard Wilbur wrote in a poem about spring, "The air was soft, the ground still cold ...." (Link to entire poem.) If you don't know the definition of anomaly, well, think about yesterday. Then you'll know. Spring in December.

I actually didn't go outside much--just our morning (habitual) trip(s) to Panera (bagel-breakfast, New York Times), Acme and Heinen's (groceries). That was it for me. Joyce went out a little later--just to experience the anomaly. She's a braver soul than I.

I stayed indoors as if it were, you know, December. I baked our weekly bread. Did a long blog post here ("Sunday Sundries, 208"). Took a nap (slept hard for about an hour). Then made our (habitual) Sunday supper--omelets and sourdough toast and potato slices browned in the oven.

After supper (we watched, via Hulu, the 1st 1/2 of SNL), we cleaned up and headed upstairs to read and stream a bit.

(Are you excited yet?)

So why didn't I go outside--all kinds of people around here did: I saw them on the walk in front of our house (a walk visible from my study window), some wearing shorts and sandals, all looking downright dazed by what was going on. (There are days when climate change doesn't seem all that bad, right?)

But not Grumpy Dan. I worked in the kitchen, sat at my computer, slept in my bed. As I've gotten older, I guess, I'm more apt to view a weather anomaly and say, This is not real! This is not the truth!

And so I kind of just hang out until it's over, till the skies begin to drip again, till the thermometer plummets, till ice and snow coat the sidewalks, the streets, our car, till the weather becomes a perfect objective correlative: exterior weather = my interior weather.

As I kid I would have loved yesterday! I would have eschewed all homework (never a hard thing for me to do), hopped on my bike, ridden furiously around the neighborhood, maybe found a pickup game of baseball up at the school field. Then, when the early darkness began to fall (it is December, recall), I would have raged, raged against the dying of the light, would have climbed in my bed, begging all the gods that ever reigned to do it again tomorrow.

But, of course, they ignored my tiny voice. As they did today.

Clouds obscuring all sunlight. Temps dropped into the 40s. Rain a threat. Even snow later on. That's more like it!

Just what I expected--just what I've learned to expect in my seventy-four years. The sunlight does not linger--nor does the warmth. Not for long. The winter arrives; things look dead; and our streaming Hope goes on Pause until Spring once again seduces Winter into heading off to the hotel to await her.