The Month of May

Something very odd happened to me today. I was hot. I know, how bizarre, huh? I was sitting outside on my lunch break in the sunshine listening to an audio recording of Dune on my iPod (probably not helping) and I realized I was legitimately too warm. This rarely happens to me. Welcome May.

May’s a good month for me. We’ve got two birthdays and an anniversary in there for our little household. I’m 32 on Friday. (You don’t have to congratulate me on my birth; I wasn’t heavily involved in the process.) I don’t bother much with birthday parties but every three or four years anymore and this isn’t one of those years where I feel inspired to hang lights in the party tree. My celebrations plans include a mid-day ballet class and thai food at Sophia’s with Shawn and the kid. Mellow. I like mellow.

The roses out back are throwing me a party anyway. This bizarre weather seems to have brought spring in all once this year. It popped like one of those New Year’s crackers with the funny paper hats. I’ve been busy doing what is required of me to encourage flower growth. Looking at them from a distance and saying, “Well that’s lovely.” Shawn stewards the garden for the most part. I pull weeds and hack away dead heads - the stuff that’s already dead or ought to be so. Meanwhile, out front, some remarkably rad two-foot tall purple flowers have sprouted in the center of the grass for no apparent reason. We’re clinging to this as our excuse for not having mown the lawn since last fall.

I’ve got two projects laid out to block in the back room, which means that the cat has been barred from the premises. Oddly enough, it’s not the half a mile of freshly knit gossamer-thin alpaca lace laid out in there that would tantalize her. It’s the wire lattice that its stretched upon that she wants to sink her teeth into. The lace shawl would just be an unfortunate causality. Ignoring string-like substances in favor of licking the coating off of stainless steel wires may seem odd and un-catlike. I won’t attempt to explain. For one thing, there’s simply no justification for that kind of behavior. Beyond that, “odd and un-catlike behavior” is the only characteristic that all cats share. No matter how weird my cat gets, every cat owner out there can out-weird me.

So the cat is locked out of the only room in the house that she can use to take refuge from a three-year-old with a rocket launcher. She’ll likely repay me for this kindness in small piles of barf in well-trafficked but unexpected locations around the house. I’m excited.

It’s late, I’m tired, and you officially know everything I know. Enjoy the sunshine.