If I remember right, this happened last year about this time, too. I bragged that this Iowa girl was immune to the different strains of bugs found in the UP. So I didn't get so much as a head cold all winter long. Nothing. Then, right as Spring is trying to start springing and things outside are getting interesting, it hits. Has to be influenza A, B, D or Z. That laying in bed for a day or two wishing someone would shoot you to get rid of the nasty body aches, then days of congestion and sneezing and nose blowing and on and off fever and chills and no sense of smell and just all over ick.
So it caught up to me this year as well.
But I am on the mend. The worst of it, I think, is the lack of energy and just being soooo tired of being sick. It's depressing to be sick. So hopefully, today, my first day back to work, is as therapeutic for me as staying home the last couple of days were, watching it snow and snow, but watching Spring come anyway, in the greening up of everything UNDER the snow, and the insistance of the little migrating-through-my-yard birds, who are telling me it's time to get out from underneath the heavy sameness of winter and onto the new exciting stuff, in spite of what the weather outside currently looks like.
All in good time.
Spring comes.
The grass starts to grow
Birds go from their drab winter colors to their flashy "Pick ME!" brights.
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| even though the in-between stage looks awkward |
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| but it gets better |
A couple of times when I took the dogs out yesterday, we were, all three of us, stopped dead in our tracks by the dicotomy of my front yard. Because there was beautiful, big fluffy flake silently falling snow.
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| even half snowflakes are beautiful |
And, hugely contrasting, the BLAST of hundreds of birds hiding in the trees, singing their various, I-AM-HERE-NOTICE-ME-WHERE-ARE-YOU-O-LOVE-OF-MY-LIFE-LET'S-GET-ON-WITH-THIS-SPRING-FLING calls and tweets and creaks and screeches and twitters and groans.
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| American Tree Sparrow, stopping by for refueling before heading to northing Canada |
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| Dapper Chipping Sparrow, dressed to impress |
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| Song Sparrow interrupting his singing to dig a hole through the snow. |
Life is amazing. It just goes on.
Bless you. In case you sneeze. And even if you don't. Happy Easter!
