Every Night is Taco Night

No spring can possibly begin until I get my traditional top of the year up past the ears haircut. This ain't no ordinary haircut, it's a major buzz job. I went in last week and told the guy I wanted it as short as possible without my hair sticking up. Mission accomplished. Now there are only a few angles where I look like as if my head was caught in farm machinery. I may not be ready to go but at least I look the part.

Spring ahead, fall back? If I ever run for the legislature my first priority will be repealing Daylight Savings Time. Most of us ain't farmers no more and besides it seems to be rather vain to attempt to manipulate something that in the end we have no control over. Yes it is nice coming home to an extra hour of sunlight, but why only in the spring and summer? Why not change our clocks forward in the fall too?

But it's no use to look back when there is so much to do. Mr. Max spotted an advertisement in the newspaper the other day that got us all excited. TACO NITE! it said in big bold letters. It was the perfect April Fools Day dinner we thought because Max and I are nothing if not fools for all cuisine south of the border. We packed our bags and headed for the unknown address in the advertisement. Unfortunately when we got there two and a half hours later all we found was a discussion on iron pellets. Go figure. By the time we got home Max was all meowed out and wasn't in the best of moods as we did our traditional Easter ritual of dressing him up in his bunny suit and hiding malted milkballs all around the house. I must say this year's carton of milkballs was especially malty!

Yeah, I really wanted tacos and it's rough sometimes getting your hopes up for something out of the ordinary only to be disappointed. But it's no use getting all bummed out for too long a time. Life is full of comedians masquerading as every day people. I went to the drug store across the street the other day to buy some stamps. "I want twenty one cent stamps," I tell the clerk. "We don't have twenty-one cent stamps," he snickers. I should have paid in pennies. I stop next at the gas station. I fill up my tank and go in to pay. "I was on number twelve," I tell the Super America employee. "And then what happened?" he wisecracks. Must be the haircut.

Pre-spring cleaning began this week. Thursday night I took a look around the house and decided a new layout was needed. There I was at midnight moving around furniture from room to room. Mr. Max couldn't quite conceal the look of concern on his face. When I was done I'm not sure I made any vast improvements but it did give the place a slightly new look. There no longer is a computer room but different rooms now have computers in them. The exercise machine was taken from the centerpiece of the living room. (Who needs machines when you have Taebo?) The only thing that took away from the refreshed feeling was the lateness of the hour and the knowledge that soon some actual cleaning needs to occur. And taxes? I suppose it's time to get those done.

Springtime is about many things but most of all it is a fresh start and about having to return back to the beginning of the cycle all over again. It doesn't always seem fair that you lose an hour in the spring when it turns out you really don't always get that hour back again equally in the fall. The events between that time can take a lot out of you. No other time of year provokes such vivid bittersweet memories in me. This is the time of "The Trip." This is when my mother sewed a little brown cloak with cotton balls plastered all over it for my first major public performance as a pussy willow and then I got sick and couldn't participate in the play. I remember going to the Target in Woodbury on Easter with our favorite person with a rabbit related name and having a Target hot dog for lunch. We parted ways and she went home for Easter Dinner and called me that night and told me she had begun sobbing at the dinner table and couldn't stop. Her family of course looked on with great concern and she simply couldn't tell them what was wrong because she didn't know. Spring can do that to you.

Indeed, I seem to be living on the edge this spring. I was grocery shopping a while back with my friend. We made it to the dairy section and as I was choosing some yogurt she told me to be sure to not buy the lowfat kind because she read it caused seizures in some people. Well, last week I had a hankering for some strawberry banana yogurt and all they had was the lowfat kind. I decided to throw caution to the wind. No seizures yet and man that yogurt was tasty!