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MARCH TROTTED AWAY like a woolly little lamb.

In fact, today was such a lamb-like day that the guy who does clean-up around our yard spent the afternoon wielding the rake, electric pruners and leaf blower. He built a fire in the meadow to burn up the long-winter lawn debris, and really tidied up the place. He's a good guy for the job, works well and is so familiar with the grounds.



I made some supper for him after he put the tools away and fed his barn-full of horses.

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HERE I AM, STRUCK DOWN by another nasty cold virus. I've known this full-blown invasion was impending since I awoke three days ago with the tiniest inkling of a sore throat. It's because the virus fairy gifted my husband with the germs more than a week ago and he's been flinging them hither and yon ever since. Despite all my valiant efforts to sidestep, I've now succumbed and have been doing my own little flowergirl thing with the germs--tossing them in the path of those who come after. What I'd like to do today is to keep my miserable nose-dripping self in bed all day (already well on my way through the morning portion), not taxing my diminished stores of energy and particularly not dropping cold germs in anyone's way.

But is it really what I most want to do? My father (always a fountain of wisdom and wit) used to maintain that one always does what one wants most to do in every situation. Yes, every situation, he argued. (Well, okay, not counting involuntary bodily--oops, excuse me while I sneeze!--things like that.)

I can just hear you sputtering in protest...There are plenty of things I don't want to do at all, but I have to! Yes, I'm sure you could come up with a long list of things you don't want to do, that you wish you didn't have to do. You have to send a big chunk of your hard-earned money to the Infernal Revenue Service, don't you? You have to pay the bills, get the car inspected, take out the garbage, scrub the toilet. I've known folks who think of a root canal as the ultimate torture, yet say they have to get one.

But you know, of course, there's always another option. In every situation there's at least one alternative. Payment of taxes is not an involuntary reflex action (though the government, I'm sure, would be delighted if it were!) You can just not pay. It's a choice. You don't really have to fork over the money. (You're not likely to get more than a life sentence, no matter how egregious your tax evasion.) There are certainly worse things than garbage rotting in the sink, filthy toilets, teeth falling out of your head. They are options. You don't, in actuality, have to get your car inspected. You don't have to pay your bills. Turns out it's what you want to do when considering all consequences. When you think about an unpleasant outcome, you realize the truth in this: whatever you opt to do, in fact, is what you most want to do.

So here I am with my lousy cold and what I want to do is pull the covers over my head and not go to meet the workman who will be showing up at Apartment #59 an hour from now (drywall repair), not run the errands that have been multiplying on my to-do list. I really do want to get some orange juice, however. I guess that means I want to go to the grocery store. Which means I want to get out of bed. There's also the pottery class later today. Do I want to go? And hey, do I want to make dinner?

Hmm. I suppose by the end of the day I'll know...pardon me, another sneeze...what it was I truly wanted to do today.


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THERE'S A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM headed your way! They said it would be there in twenty minutes. And there's a strong chance of a tornado, too! My daughter called today with this urgent message. She'd just heard the radio warning and we both agreed that a warning means it's a pretty sure thing. So I called the dog inside and I closed the kitchen window (yes, it was actually that warm outside!)

It was mid-afternoon and there hadn't been any indications of a storm brewing. But very soon the sky looked like this:


And then like this:


The clouds were low and roiling. And in another direction, the sky was a weird tornado-forecasting shade (according to my reading of it, which is colored by my apprehension, which is directly related to my age-eight-year-old viewing of The Wizard of Oz on t.v...


...Well, all the animals seemed uneasy, too, and they never saw any movies at all with special effects!)


I hung nervously around the basement door and thought about the plans I've had to re-arrange the living room furniture. Putting the sofa in a tree or a lamp up on the barn roof hadn't occurred to me before, and I can't say the idea was very appealing. For all I knew, though, the project might really get out of hand if things got moving at whirlwind speed!

Lightning streaked and thunder cracked and boomed and rumbled. Rain came in torrents.
Sirens sounded, not too far away.

But in the end, that tornado must have knocked on (down) someone else's door. And, fortunately, it looks as though I get to do my own (strictly interior) re-design.

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HAVE YOU HEARD...SADIE'S GOT A NEW DRESS ON?!

There was a whole lotta pickin' goin' on tonight (I'm not talkin' noses here--although, who's to know?--I was sitting in the second row, with nine hundred or so foot-tappin' hand clappin' fans behind me.) While I wouldn't say bluegrass is my favorite musical genre, I do like it a lot and I can't sit still as well as the best of 'em.




It was Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver clued me in to Sadie's new frock, and provided lots more entertainment at the longest-lasting concert I've ever attended. Beginning at 6:30pm, the fingers plucked and strummed and bowed the strings until 11:10pm.



Sharing the stage was another band--The Bluegrass Brothers, with some mighty fine talent of their own.




I left the auditorium with a thought of relief that feasting on bluegrass is like feasting on celery---you don't gain weight no matter how much you gorge. Otherwise, I'd a been waddlin' out of there for sure!

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THERE'S NOT MUCH noodling around in my head that I can envision sparking anyone's attention. However, since I don't wish to let every last one of you, my dear handful of readers--my handful of dear readers--despair of ever finding a new post and drift away to a place of no return (I can hear the disgusted little exhalation of breath and the murmuring--huh, she's fizzled out on this blog, plumb procrastinated past the point of potential on-goingness,) I'm going to offer up this rather unlikely scenario that I spotted at the grocery store a few days ago.

I've never seen this sight before. There's a good possibility I'll never see this sight again. And just as likely a chance that you'll never happen upon such a scene yourself: A man, with four sons in attendance, perusing the aisles of the grocery store, intently studying the boxes, jars and cans of food for sale, every so often somewhat tentatively gathering an item off the shelves and passing it to one small son or another to carry in his arms.

Now you may agree that such a scenario sounds like a rare occurrence, but add this to the mix if you will: They are all dressed exactly alike (with just one small exception) from the tops of their heads to the bottoms of their toes!

Before you shake your head and convince yourself that I am scraping around inside an empty barrel, making up tales in my zeal to attract your interest, I've got to show you my proof--the oh-so-surreptitiously taken photos. The nervous fingering of my camera, quickly fished from my overcrowded purse and held at the ready behind the head of lettuce in my cart, would have produced much more striking photos of the boys as they trailed their father in stairstep array down the aisles of the store (and I, in turn, trailing them) were it not for my fear of being seen as a paparazzo. I let too many ideal opportunities pass me by in my hesitancy, but finally opted to snap a shot as they waited in line at the checkout.


Aha... you see...I live in Amish country!
(Quite obvious in light of the fact that the local grocery store has a horse tie-up shed at the edge of the parking lot.)


And then, with my carton of ice cream slowly melting, I sat in my car and awaited the chance to show you the quintet of males as they're ready to load up their buggy and deliver the fixin's home to mom.


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ps--click to enlarge for a better straw-hat view.