closer to thirty

This morning I have decent coffee (keeping a Bodum and beans in my suitcase is one of the better investments I made this year), a card left for me on the nightstand that plays "Who Let the Dogs Out" (it also wishes me a happy 21st birthday), and The Supremes. I have been listening to an awful lot of The Supremes lately.

It's drizzling here, but I don't mind rain when it comes at the end of April, when there are enough buds to turn bright green against the wet trunks. Outside the window, the near-leaves are chartreuse. According to Wikipedia (F+!), they are the color Web chartreuse, which is exactly 50% green and 50% yellow. Real-life chartreuse is more yellow.

This is most I have ever typed the word chartreuse.

I realized yesterday that this almost-bloom is exactly what I expect from my birthday, because since the age of seven I have celebrated my birthday in the north--New Jersey, New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin. But if I lived further south, like I'm always yapping about, this would be February or March weather. Late April would be nearly hot. The leaves would have already unfurled. They'd be deepening their green. The tulips would have wilted. I would miss this weather.

This has been a very pleasant week so far--some good runs, even if the SRITS kill me every time, and some ambitious seminar-type plans for the class that starts next week, and driving the back roads of southern 'Scansin with the B, and flip-flops, even though it is a teensy bit too cool for them. I bought some ambitious madras shorts yesterday. When it clears up this afternoon, we'll drive up to Madison and walk around the lake.

The dog keeps going back to bed this morning--every time I go to look for him, he is curled up on the pillows, his nose tucked under his tail stub.

Yesterday I spent some hours downloading photos from an-about-to-expire photo account. Looking through the pictures--we took so many pictures--I realized how little we all looked. Something in our faces was softer. But I like the way we look now better. Still, it was strange to think that our first martini party was four years ago. Or is it--then I think that I have been mailing out copies of the ms. and talking about moving into the apartment downstairs and measuring the distance from Kalamazoo. Then four years seems about right.

I think the year ahead will be a good one. Here's to that.