It is nearly calendar spring for those living north of the equator. Equinox, however, will apply to all of humanity. If you set goals for the new year, this might be a good time to update some and abandon others. I won’t tell.
We switched to daylight savings time on Sunday, March 13th. It is sort of an American revving up for Springtime. The grass in my yard is brown, mushy and much of it has a sodden worn out crust of persistent snow.
The County Tax assessor sent me a notice that I should go outside, count my livestock and report the number even though we will not be taxed on them. Livestock. Those rabbits are escapees, Mr. Tax Guy, they just started showing up sometime last Summer. The deer, not ours, they drop by for pumpkins and plums. Any other wildlife is purely circumstantial.
I am sure that real springtime is a week away and the greening won’t happen till late next month, so why are the kids out of school on something they refer to as Spring Break? Is this crazy school closing supposed to reinforce our worries about the public school’s money pit?
On Sunday, I decided I had piddle-farted around with a revision of a novel quite too long. In my revisions I saved new work with cleaver file names, then saved them to seemingly random parts of my computer. In the end, I printed out the scenes list and cut them out. I tacked them to a cardboard presentation board and went through the revised scenes one by one and rechaptered one scene after the next until the book was rebuilt.
It was getting late, so I finished up, submitted the manuscript and hurried over to the Writer’s Chatroom. Heather Kuehl was our guest. I invited her, set it up ,and made a text filled with questions that proved I’d researched her short of the stalking phase. With these notes waiting in the background of my computer, I logged into chat.
When it was time to copy and paste the introduction and chat rules, my computer refused to cooperate. I signed in from another computer and it refused to copy text as well. I still have not resolved this issue. I can find many sites online where this problem has been presented but there are no answers. One site offered to answer at the low low rate of 57 cents per minute. So, here I am on Wednesday with no solution in sight.
I know, I am complaining. I shouldn’t let the little things get me down. The church ladies made that perfectly clear as they left me literature on the ‘end times.’ This is nothing compared to earthquakes, tsunamis’, uranium poisonings, uprisings in the Middle East, global warming and general economic distress. I am very superstitious and although I don’t and won’t go into a book that begins with a warning forbidding interpretations, it still creeps me out worse than any disaster or horror film does.
What? What is my point? Well, I don’t have one. I am still bummed about the things I cannot do in a chatroom. I am still gobsmacked about my computers’ new disability and I can hardly wait for that special color of soft green that announces a real live springtime. And I forgot to mention the Ranch Store up the road has baby chicks for sale.
Go on over to my March Contest, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like to buy a book or two without exceeding a budget.