Thursday 19 March 2009

One of Those Days


How in the dickens did it get to be Thursday. And me with no more accomplished than if it were last Thursday. Crock. I have just been reading an article on procrastination in a magazine called Scientific American Mind. (I should have been doing laundry, but there I was in my reading chair enjoying the sun on my lap and face and reading about not getting on with things.) It tells the reader that one of the best techniques to cure putting off doing something is to break the whole task up into manageable portions. Hmm. I guess I will go out and fill the bird feeders and put out deer food. Then I can come back and put some work in.

We have a flock of ten wild turkeys hanging about the place these days. Little Stuff thought at first that they were moving rocks when she spotted them at sunrise. She was also highly unimpressed with the turkey droppings all around the feeding station and picked her way through the goo with her little face screwed up into a most unladylike expression. They are scratching up the soggy grass newly emerging from the snow in the maintained field and JG is now thinking we should chase them away. It's an all female flock at present and I am hoping that they will stay long enough for a Tom to catch up with them and display. That's quite a sight.

We also have a big, big flock of mixed redpolls and American goldfinch who are eating huge amounts of Niger seed the last while; they are emptying the big feeder every day. When they are full they hang about and twitter among themselves (non electronically), sounding very cheerful. JG is not cheerful; the price of good Niger seed is way up and he thinks they are being piggy.

I don't know whether I am happy or depressed at this stage of spring. The air is warming up and the snow is melting. A winter's worth of crud is appearing and the footing is terrible. The red wing blackbirds and robins are back; huddled around fluffing up their feathers and looking cranky. The days are longer. The house is cold because we've switched from the wood furnace to the wood stoves and if the day is cold and the wind is blowing, as it is today, the only really warm places in it are near the stove and where the sun is shining in. So I am just like the robins, wearing two sweaters and feeling cold.

I'm just grumpy today. I don't want to be here waiting for slow poke Eastern Ontario spring. I want robins and cardinals singing, little green shoots poking inquisitive noses out of the ground, warm winds blowing. Somewhere south of me these things are happening. I want to open the windows and smell fresh grass and lilac and I don't want to vacuum a pile of muddy gravel out of the front entrance again. I want to be somewhere else, someplace where I am handed a menu and find my bed made with fresh sheets and look out the window at a beautiful view.

Bored and cranky and cold and fed up. Oh well. Tomorrow, as someone famously remarked, is another day.

12 comments:

  1. there is always another day, and spring will come--eventually. It's good to look at the bright spots like sunshine through windows, flocks of chattering birds and fascinating turkeys. Not everybody gets that. have a good one =)

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  2. I don't know about that advice for overcoming procrastination, especially as it applies to housework and other Sisyphean tasks. I find that I just don't get as much done without external pressure.

    We're a few hundred miles south of you and there aren't many more signs of spring here yet either. I'm feeling a bit guilty because last August we had several trees cut (although it's still a wooded area) and the birds are not coming in like they used to, even though there is a perfectly logical explanation in that my bird feeders are broken and I haven't been consistent putting out seed.

    I did get an emotional lift midweek after stopping at the carwash to use their superpowered vacuum to get all that gravel out of my car.

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  3. Get on a plane and come!!!!!!!!!!!!! (although it is so dry here that spring is not springing as I am used to. But their are daffodils around City Hall.)

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  4. And yes. I used the wrong 'there' ...

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  5. Oh, I completely understand. We in NE Ohio had a lovely few days of 60s and a day of 70s only to be plunged into the low 30s today, the first day of Spring! I'm huddled up and freezing. The only bright spot--no pun intended, truly--is that it has been sunny. No snow for quite some time now, thankfully, after our record-breaking January and early February. But I am impatient for summer. Even Spring is too cold for me.

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  6. I too am a procrastinator. I love planning to do things and I do do them but in my own time. We in Pa. had a lovely three days of spring and it will be in the thirties tomorrow morning. Fun. *s*

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  7. I know this feeling of waiting. I can't quite remember where you are in Ontario but I'm up north (not so far north, Sudbury area) and things are slow here to relent. A few teasing days. But I have to say, you in a sweater near a woodstove waiting can't all be bad. Sounds lovely, even if you and I itch to be out on green.

    Have a great weekend! Sunday is supposed to warm.

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  8. It's shifting here, too... and I know this is weird.. but I am dreading summer. Whenever it begins to get too warm, my body goes to DEFCON 4. :)



    ~*

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  9. Cheer up; we saw our first two robins today. Mind you, I've been grumpy too.

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  10. Reading about procrastination and procrastinating instead of doing laundry. Sounds about right :-0. At times reading and enjoying the sun can be very important, more important than laundry. I had to remove some of my trees a few years back and I am still not over it.

    Bored & cranky? Lap up some sun if you can.....
    ~Mary

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  11. This time of year is nature's procrastination and it drives me crazy. I want spring to just drop out of the sky BAM in one day and get it over with. Melt all the snow, put away the winter gear, move on to the next season -- none of this back and forth shilly shallying.

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  12. I too find this phase of spring both uplifting (more sun! birds! less snow!) and depressing (rain! nasty things under the snow now revealed! only warm for a little bit in the afternoon!). Really, I just want the warmish days of fall year round. And I find nothing more conducive to procrastination than a prickly mood like early spring brings on!

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