Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Well, I had a pretty good weekend. This is what I did:

• Ate lunch with friends
  
• Addressed all my wedding invitations
• Addressed some of them again after we spilled wine on them
• Met with the flower lady
• Went cross-country skiing
• Went to see The Chronicles of Narnia at our fun, beer-selling movie theater
• Went downhill skiing on the best bluebird day ever! It was so, so, gorgeous! And warm!
• Tried to pick up E's wedding ring -- it turned out to be the wrong one, so it will have to be re-ordered
• Went to church
• Replanted my drooping sunflower seedlings
• Called another photographer

So that's it, I guess. The Chronicles of Narnia was really cool. I loved The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe when I was a kid; I must have read it 20 times. And I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was not disappointing at all.

I think part of the reason I loved that movie was because Narnia always seemed like a beautiful, unmarred land. Kind of like Alaska, except without Anchorage, and the forest fires and stuff. I remember loving the part in the book where winter melted away into spring. Watching it in the movie reminded me a lot of what it's like up here. Winter lasts so long, and it's very beautiful, but dark, cold, and it gets rather tiresome. Then in the spring, the sun comes out, and we get a long spell with no rain or snow and everything melts away so fast! Of course, here it takes a little longer for the plants to green up and start blooming. That part isn't so great, because everything is dirty and yucky until summer arrives. But even so, the relatively quick change can seem so magical after 5 months of snow and ice.

Spring is arriving fast right now. What that means for us is that everything is melting and turning parking lots and roads into muddy rivers and lakes during the day, and then freezing at night. This is what we call break-up, and everyone tolerates it because they know it means summer is coming soon! By the middle of April, things wil probably be all melted. And by the first of May, we should start to see buds and leaves.

I can't wait to get out and run and hike and bike and camp and garden and fish and.....