O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

We're having a spring snow storm tonight....most of winter's accumulation has melted away.  Our custom is to keep the window candles on from Thanksgiving weekend until the First Day of Spring.  But today, it was so cold and bleak,GB said let's turn them on for a while longer - it's cheerier.  So this evening, after he left for his cribbage game, I took this photo of the front of the house with candles and snow flakes.

Ordinarily we stay home if the weather's iffy, but tomorrow we'll be out early, picking up Dr L at 4:30AM, heading for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.  For 17 years he's been our doctor but had to relinquish his medical practice when he was stricken in October.  Many of his patients have tried to help where we can.   It will be a long day for him, with limited endurance and coping with pain.  We're glad to be able to help.

 M's neighbor W is losing her hair to chemotherapy now also.  A couple of years ago when G had her head shaved through the St. Baldrick's Foundation to raise money for childrens' cancer research, I made her chemo caps - it can be pretty chilly in mid-March.   So I decided to sew some for W.  I goofed with the first one -  sewed it with a 5/8" seam allowance instead of a half inch.  Too snug.  That will teach me to read all the directions before starting.  I sent both anyway and will make some more.  Maybe there's a childrens' chemo hat need where the small one can be donated.

Say what you mean

I've always enjoyed words and grammar.  Subtle mini-cringes roll through me when I hear phrases like:  

• Hopefully, the flight will arrive on time....   [the flight can only hope..]
• We are anxious to see you....  [what are you afraid of?  oh, you mean eager..]
• If a teenager wants to be taken seriously, they should....  [did he suddenly sprout a clone?]

Professional jargon can elevate lazy language to hilarious levels.  In 45 years of nursing, I've heard some beauties.  Consider the confusion between regime and regimen.  Practitioners at every level of health care will speak and write of someone's medication regime when they mean medication regimen.  The phrase "bowel regime" must be used a millions times a day across this country. 

Definitions (from dictionary.com):
regime - mode or system of rule or government
regimen - a regulated course . . . . . to attain some result

I don't want to imagine what life would be like under a Bowel Regime .

Seasons changing

Hanging clean, wet laundry out to dry - an under-appreciated pleasure. We have two long pulley lines out the back: one is accessible from the bathroom window on the main floor of our little house. The second attaches to the house at ground level near the herb garden. We added it 12 years ago when granddaughter A lived with us for several months, to accommodate her cloth diapers - another under-appreciated feature of a bygone era. We hardly use the lower line any more even though I adore hanging out laundry from that fragrant garden.  Plus it reminds us of A's babyhood..

This morning I hung clothes out through the bathroom window noting how much grass and garden have emerged from months of snow cover. Of course, I had to grab our fool cat, Randy, as he sprang onto the window sill to take flight 1 1/2 stories straight down. I'm thinking such high-risk behavior smacks of a brain already testosterone-soaked by the time when he was neutered at just under a year old, poor thing.

It's a rite of spring for me, this laundry thing. Like opening the windows so March gales can race through, whipping up dust and sending papers flying. I love it. Bought some fabric for a quilt block project and washed that with today's load. Just-washed fabric generates a lot of loose threads. I snip them off and let them fly away in the wind with the hope some mother bird will furnish a nest with them. As soon as the mud solidifies,  I'll be distributing the bag of nesting materials I've accumulated over the winter: strands of knitting cottons & wools, snippets of fabrics & threads, lengths of narrow ribbon, string, what have you. I put small amounts here and there in the woods behind our house, clumps of them on the clothes lines, and inside the shrubberies in the yard. Last summer was the first and only time I've seen a bit of man made textile woven into a nest but it's enough to keep me doing this silly little thing I do

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