Not Exactly Springing

Okay. Spring is now a week old. Winter is over. But you can't tell looking out my window. The back yard is still completely covered with snow, and although there are puddles of water in the driveway, they are surrounded by a thick sheet of ice, and they, too, will turn to ice overnight. This is what passes for Spring in New Hampshire.

I know I should expect it. After all, I have lived here for a little more than a dozen years, and it takes a long time for the last signs of Winter to go away. But it has been such a long, cold, snowy, expensive Winter, that we are just that more anxious to bid it good riddance.

Even my children, who play happily in the snow, wonder aloud when it's going to warm up.

Karen will be happy when I can get back outside again and finish the front porch, and begin work on the back deck. I don't know how I feel about that; it seems that every time I turn around I'm having to learn some new carpentry skill, and while I knew that I would get stuck with it when we moved into an unfinished house, it always feels as though it's taking time away from the important things in life, like writing and music and filmmaking and, well, paying someone else to do carpentry, which I could do if any of those other things were actually making me money.

Alright, I admit there is a certain satisfaction in accomplishing something when I had no idea what I was doing going in. But I think I could learn to take even more satisfaction out of patronizing a fine craftsman who needs the work and can do a far better job than I can. I like specialization, as a concept.

But there's no sense living in the past. Or the future, for that matter. I'm here now, waiting for the thaw and spending that time on a lot of different things, including writing and music and filmmaking, and even some fun theater projects.

And Karen and I are working on some more craft videos and books, so I'm definitely not sitting, staring at the ice and snow, and saying "I'm bored."

Actually, I don't think I can remember the last time I was bored.