Things About That Time of the Year

Call it Spring Fever. Call it Cabin Fever. Call it discontent. It's that time of year again. The time when it's too warm for boots and too cold for flip flops and everything I try to wear is Exactly the Wrong Thing. The weather is having an identity crisis just like I am. The house is too stuffy and the yard is too mucky and the only thing that feels good is being in the car and cruising down the road to anywhere, slightly over the speed limit with loud music and somebody that doesn't annoy me. Or a dog.

Unfortunately it's also that time of year when it seems more important than ever that I remain gainfully employed and so I find myself cruising up the road to places I'd rather not go, slightly under the speed limit behind a chip truck (if you have to ask, then you've never been on HWY 25 to the Canadian border) that has just thrown a rock the size of a golf ball into my already cracked windshield. It's ok, I didn't like that windshield anyway.

Seems like of All the Years that I've been complaining, this one should be the least complain-worthy. I've got a brand new-to-me house, living in the "Big City," and all-in-all, thing are looking mighty upwards for me. And yet, here I am, with complaints to register in spite of it.

I was reminded the other day, while talking to Someone Amazing, that this is part of my cycle, something I go through every. single. year. Like in 2017, and in 2016  and again in 2016 , and in 2014, and a lot of other times in between and before and probably ever afterward. It's just part of my year. Part of appreciating the other seasons when I am happy to be home and snuggled in, waiting anxiously for the first snowfall of the year and getting Christmas Trees. Or escaping the sweltering heat with a cold beer in a shady hammock. Spring is a restless season for me. And that's ok. It makes me re-examine and re-evaluate where I am at and what I am doing. Sometimes I come out knowing I am on the right path, and sometimes I get to re-adjust. Discontent isn't bad if it moves us to the next step, or the next phase, or the next level of commitment to the thing that we have been dragging our feet about, like a retirement plan, or a book to write, or Someone Amazing.

The good news is I get to bust out soon. In a few days I will be on my way to sunshiney and oceany things in Mexico with people that don't annoy me. And then it will be time to get to work. Time to travel and be busy and be homesick and discontent that I don't have endless hour to kill in my stuffy house and mucky yard with somebodies that do annoy me. And dogs.

Things About Busting Out

Sometimes I can feel the four walls of the choices I have made closing in around me like the trash compactor in A New Hope (If you don't get that reference, I have nothing but sympathy and suggestions for recovering you childhood for you). I am fantastically busy - so much so that the idea of adding one more activity to the list borders on tear-jerking. The trouble is that I find myself drowning in everybody else's business. This is not the business of me. This is the business of the people that I owe money to, the friends in need, the children I am raising - the choices I have made - closing in, all around me.

I can find The Joy in the things every day that I Must Do, but secretly, in my heart, I long for The Joy to find me. To seek me out. To pursue me relentlessly like a puppy who needs my involvement Right This Second. I can make the best of things, see the cup half full, bloom where I am planted and all of that jazz - I am a pro - really, I am. But I ache to wake up, once again overcome by happiness, and the knowledge that I am known. I am doing my OWN business. It's about me. It hasn't been the season for that lately - there's just been too much outside of me that needed tending, so the weeds have taken over my internal garden in the same fashion that they would a real garden if I ever tried to have one.

But the sun is out, and my dormant soul is pushing back against the walls of obligation and duty. So much so that I just Googled airfare prices for next week to three different continents, then map-quested a semi-reasonable road trip that I could actually manage. I need to fly. I've been feeling it for a couple of weeks. Maybe longer, but it was quiet until recently and I could ignore it. Not any more. I am restless and frustrated, and I need the open road to remember me and all of our good times. I need to remind the springtime that I am more than the sum of my many children and jobs and commitments. More than a teacher, a waitress, a mother, a chauffeur - I am a Wildling trapped in an SUV and a rental agreement. I stare out the window of my classroom some moments and feel my breath come short and shallow, as if the air has been cut off completely by the finger-smudged glass.

Maybe I don't have somebody to ride shotgun for - maybe alone is better anyway. Maybe I am discontent - but if nobody was ever discontent, I feel like we'd still be grunting at each other over our gourdfuls of seeds and berries, and waxing philosophical about how the idea of a wheel isn't very practical really. All that traveling. A little bit of restless is what it takes to get over the mountains, and I am grateful that my restless isn't dead yet.

It's time to break this 100 mile radius that I have circled for months on end. It's time to cross state lines, bend the rules and make up my story as I go, choosing to tell only The Ones I please when I am done. It is time to expand my heart again, to take in more than this tiny little town and all of the hurts and aches and struggles that the winter has fed it. I know that out there The Joy is waiting. It's calling for me to come and play. The air smells different in Montana. In Oregon. In Idaho. Along the highway. Maybe I won't hit Mexico, but I can get started. Wait for me, Someplace, I am coming...

Chief Mountain, Glacier National Park

Things About Jelly Beans

I have this thing for jelly beans. I really like them. I always have. The traditional spiced ones are my favorite, the minty, cinammony, licoricey ones. I like Jelly Bellies, but only to pick out the Strawbery Daiquiri and Buttered popcorn flavors. I don't mind the fruit ones, especially cherry - because cherry anything and everything is pretty much the best (more on this later).

Easter is obviously jelly bean season, since Jelly Bellies go on coupon at Costco, which is the determining factor of all seasonal designations. Several years ago, I bought a Costco  size vat of Jelly Bellies for my friend with a toddler. The toddler ate most of the jelly beans and attached forever an association between Jelly Beans and me. Last week I gave his mom a new vat of all cherry flavored jelly beans (more on this later) and the kid, a now 8 year old, proceeded to help her demolish those, telling all of his friends the story of Liv and the jelly beans. I am something of legend among 8 year olds in Northport.

Around Valentine's day this year, I fell in love. Wisely, this time, there was no man involved. Instead I gave my heart to a bag of various cherry flavored jelly beans. Cherry Lovers is a mix of nine different cherry flavored, heart shaped jelly beans. First of all, nine different variations of cherry is nothing but yum, and secondly, heart shaped? AWWWWWW. So much love. The mix includes wild cherry, cherry cola, chocolate cherry, cherry cheesecake, cherry vanilla, cherry daiquiri, bing cherry, black cherry, and a couple more that I can't remember because my mouth is watering. The best thing about these is that even though they're made by a gourmet candy company, you can get them at Safeway rebranded under their Select brand, for literally HALF the price. And in giant vats. Which, obviously, I needed. They live on the headboard of my bed, and together with a few Chicken 'n a Biscuit crackers and episodes of Criminal Minds, pretty much round out every night of my very single-womanish life. I caught one kid getting into my cherry jelly beans and I might have freaked a little. Feeling a little bit guilty, I went out and bought a few bags of traditional Jelly-Bird Eggs to fill up my candy jar. I still yell at the kids when I see or hear them getting in to it, but with as much as I am gone, they tend to disappear at a steady rate. It's the kid-in-the-candy-jar mischief that I "allow" to avoid other types of mischief. Such as kid-in-the-liquor-cabinet. I am sure it's working. Because who would sneak vodka when there are jelly beans to snitch?

Author's note: I would like to acknowledge in relationship to my last blog entry, that the consumption of Jelly Beans and Chicken n' Biscuit crackers might have some influence on the not-effect of "running" on my physique... but let's not go there. Denial is bliss.