You're finally here!

[elaby]

Spring! I've longed for you like no other year!

This morning, there was a dusting of snow on the grass and the tops of cars, but when we stepped outside, the wind was warm and it smelled like dampness - soft dampness, not the sharp, hard dampness of winter.

Oh yes.

I had a day full of meetings and only one break (I usually take two and a lunch), and after dinner, caitirin and I went for a walk. It smelled like pine on our road, and we walked all the way to where the highway passes over the main road that runs past our apartment.

I've been feeling like all I see everywhere is grunge and dirt and brown dead everything, and it's driving me mad. Caitirin said, "You've got spring fever," and I was surprised, because I didn't think of it that way, but it's true. The only place I can walk at work is on sidewalks in the middle of what used to be an air force base but is now an "international tradeport," which pretty much means it has tons of roads and massive office buildings and water towers and manufactured landscapes with a little bit of forest in the middle where some hawks live. It can be beautiful, and in the summer, it is - but right now, the sidewalks are lined by lumps of dirt-encrusted snow, road debris, crap from construction projects, and garbage. Bottles, newspaper, bits of plastic... oh, did I mention porn? Yeah, the other day I found a "dirty magazine" with what looked like both fiction and advertisements. I carried it to a building and threw it away in the bathroom, because there are no garbage cans, and all the dumpsters by the buildings are padlocked.

So anyway, Caitirin and I went walking and took pictures of the sky and bare branches, and we talked to the buds at the end of them and watched birds frenzy across the sky above us. We talked about getting away for a while and what kind of vacation we'd like if we could have any kind, and about believing in things. I felt so much better when we got back.

I want to take a bath now ^_^