I found spring! It's living down here in North Carolina. My friend has daffodils growing up beside her house and pansies in pots. I do dearly love pansies in pots; I'm going to get some when I return home tomorrow.
This vacation has been marvelous. (Marvelous is a word I use a lot, I've noticed. There's nothing like blogging for a year or so to let one know what words, phrases and metaphors one gravitates toward. My apologies.)
I have dined like Mary Antoinette, I have socialized like one of those affluent aunts in a Jane Austin novel-you know the type-the ones that are fond of going to Bath.
Even better, the eldest of my friend's children has befriended me. He is a precocious five year old and without warning will come up and lean against me and tell me things. Cute things. He also stuck a glittery blue sticker on my coat and takes my hand without my asking when we cross the street. I have been completely charmed.
Oh, and I got my period. So I figured out that if my period is late, it doesn't mean that I'm pregnant, it means that I have to go to someone else's house and spend the night. Good to know.
Tomorrow I'm returning home. I'll have a little ceramic frog and a cheeky bird to put on my windowsill. Also, ten more pounds on my waist and some fabulously embarrassing pictures that will be posted on facebook and memories that I wouldn't trade for the world.
Oh, and new sayings that we all discovered on a shopping trip up in the mountains. Keith told me I can't put them up in our house, but I'll find a way.
"First God created man. And then He had a better idea."
"If at first you don't succeed, try doing it the way your wife told you to."
Lastly: "Drink Coffee: Do stupid things faster with more enthusiasm!"
(I've had some coffee actually, can you tell?)
Now, if only tomorrow I can make it safely through security. It gets harder and harder. I try not to be nervous, because then I'll look like a suspicious person and be pulled aside and wand-ed in public by a female security officer until they've discovered my missing tonsils and the rivets on my jeans. And those will be taken away and I'll be able to go through wearing a towel, very meekly.
So instead, I'll look both cheerful and compliant (which is tricky) and avoid the gaze of the guy who sits on this elevated chair thing, surveying the oncoming, disrobing crowds for anything out of the ordinary.
Remember when everyone boarded the plane with bottles of water? Remember that? And no one would ever think of taking off one's shoes. And they served you food on the flight and people would take these huge bags to carry on and they probably had nail clippers in their purses.
Those were the days.
