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Even this has changed. So much sunshine, weather in the forties without the spindly minus in front, and fallow fields have turned swampland, puddling. I even saw a small waterfall at the edge of one field, water running over a heap of stones, disappearing in the valley by the highway.

I want to believe that spring is on its way, but I know this is a fluke, that Minnesota simply doesn't give up on winter in mid-February. It's a respite and nothing else.

Right?

Currently:
- Middlesex for school, You Shall Know Our Velocity! in the great read-and-donate project.
- Listening to The March by EL Doctorow. I've been having a hard time finding a book on CD that doesn't make me want to fling it out the window in frustration--poorly developed characters, ridiculous plot changes, awful awful writing, and on. This one I've just started, but I'm thinking of the Alice Sebold and the JoAnne Harris, the Ursula Hegi and Maeve Binchy, the Sarah Gruen and Kim Edwards. Books I knew I wouldn't otherwise want to read, but listening might not be so bad. I've avoided the classics because I wanted to prop them up in my lap, have a more intimate contact with them, but maybe... Anyway, for the Chicago trip, I picked up Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. After reading The Road for the class I'm teaching, I'm curious to explore others, though I think it would qualify as a listen-curiosity as opposed to a reading one. It seems I've lost so much of the time I'd adapted to as far as reading goes--last semester spoiled me. This semester is keeping my nose to the, erm, paperstone. Yeah, that was awful. I need some sleep.
- Drinking lemonade. It's not summer yet, I know, but the sunshine made me do it.
- Small frustrations: the lose your wallet and find it hours later sort. The mud tracks on the carpet sort. The dishes built up in the sink, and on.
- The cleaning that comes from looking for a wallet. Sigh of exasperation, then scrub, straighten, recycle. Shred paper for the worms, for the compost tin. Maybe even read old New Yorkers, if you could imagine yourself a pocket of time.