April really IS the cruelest month!...

Wow. TS Eliot may have been on to something. Go figure.

This whole "April-showers-bring-May-flowers-so-just-you-grin-and-bear-it-all-part-of-the-eternal-dance-turning-of-the-seasons" thing is crap.
It's supposed to be 'Spring' already.
Well 'Spring', thus far, has been nothing but an embryonic, maddening tease. It has been nothing but muddy and grey and cold and ugly and full of sleet.

You see, April mocks you.
It mocks you 'cause, y'know, you'll look like a big ol' DORK if you're still wearing your winter coat at this time of year. 'Cause - hey! It's April!
Yeah - except that it was April last week, too, and last week felt like frickin' January.

April mocks you with plenty of light in the evenings - so you can see just how ugly the back garden is when you get home, and then yearn to go out and rake up all the mulch and uncover new growth and make it all pretty again, and then April slams you with sullen iron-grey sleet on the weekend when you've actually got the time to do that. And still, you would. Except, you know, if it wasn't for the sleet. Which would nicely wither anything you uncovered in your mulch-raking anyway.

April is **shudder** tax time. And dropping off your tax stuff to your tax accountant in SLEET. Have I mentioned the sleet?

April is waiting.

Waiting to go out and buy incredibly cute new shoes and the kinds of bits of clothing that can only ever be described as frocks and/or togs and such. Except that - it ain't anywhere NEAR warm enough or un-mucky enough to wear frockish toggery if you did.

April is desperately wanting to buy brightly colored toss cushions for a freshly arranged room and not being able to find any you like (oh - wait. That's probably just a personal frustration at the moment. I don't think it's necessarily April-specific...)

April is snow mold. And then, it's the mold leftover AFTER the snow mold is gone. It is cracks in last years flower pots and the leftover detritus of a whole other season acumulated in the sidewalk margins.

And it makes me grumpy. And lethargic. It makes me unproductive. You may have noticed. (Or you may have just assumed that I was finally abducted by the aliens - maybe I was! maybe this entire 'April rant' is just clever misdirection! hah! didja ever think of that?! Huh? Huh?)

But then, today, when I looked out the window and saw that it was actually sunny? Well.
At first, it was intermittent. Just patchy, brave bits of renegade blue sky showing through.
A beam here, a beam there.
And then... and then - FULL ON SUNSHINE!!
I became - dare I say it - giddy! So giddy, in fact, that it made me want to BLOG fer cryin' out loud!

But first, before I did that?
I went and re-read TS Eliot's The Waste Land.
Can't o.d. on giddy, now. Not on a Wednesday in the cruelest month.
Might upset a critical balance or something.


Can we have May now, please?