Spring Fever

According to Wikipedia, the major league
baseball season begins in April and lasts until September. In my old stomping grounds, Washington, D.C., a glorious new baseball stadium, Nationals Park, is about to open (who remembers watching the Washington Senators play at Griffith/RFK Stadium in the Sixties? I do.). In 3 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes and 5 seconds, according to their website, the Atlanta Braves play their opening game (against the Nationals!).

But here, just up the road from Turner Field, we've got everybody beat. At my house, the Whiffle ball season has already begun. Here's Jim, standing in the batter's box, next to the blue chair (which is the strike zone and substitute catcher), doing his best Babe Ruth imitation, pointing to where he's about to hit that Whiffle ball.


And here's Jim watching that Whiffle ball float by. Sort of like Cleebo, in the clinch, in THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS, eh?

We play serious Whiffle ball. No, we don't. But on Easter Sunday, spring fever smacked us silly. We rose to the challenge.




Some of us actually hit the ball. And all of us had a good time...







...even those who stole the ball after it was all over.






I found this old teak table at Kudzu in Decatur and brought it home. We ate Easter dinner on the back porch at this table; I gathered the Lenten roses and nandina from my gardens.

Spring is everywhere in Atlanta -- the Bradford pears are already done blooming and have leafed out. My dogwoods are about to pop. The forsythia is long gone to green. Soon the pine pollen will coat the world with a golden glow (or is that "goo") and the grass will be thick and feisty again. The riot of color that is Atlanta in springtime is about to careen at fever pitch through the month of April. I'm going to careen right along with it. I've got spring fever, myself.

I've been moving bricks and digging in the dirt and pulling weeds and organizing cabinets and throwing out stuff and watching my carport floor turn red and climbing Stone Mountain and eating my vegetables and listening to good friends play music and writing about all of it in my notebook, keeping list after list, plotting and planning and figuring and cataloguing and more -- it's my way of organizing my mind and my world in the midst of all this green, this spring, this possibility.

And, I'm writing. I'm in the midst of a challenge, actually, that I want to share with you after I've returned from Florida. Tomorrow I fly to Orlando, where I'll speak to teachers at the Polk County Reading Association -- it's their first conference and I am psyched to be their speaker. They are expecting 250 in attendance -- they are off to a great start -- yay, Polk County teachers! Good for you.

I'm back Friday, when we'll celebrate Hannah's 22nd birthday. Maybe we'll play Whiffle ball, if I can convince her to give us back the ball.

A couple of updates:
-- Comments are turned on.

-- WW: I have hit the dreaded plateau -- what do y'all do here? But hey -- I'm holding steady at -22 pounds.

-- Remember my next-door neighbors who hated my new house colors? They spent part of their Easter weekend planting trees on the property line between our houses. I made myself go out and wave. It's okay. They waved back. If I can express myself, so can they. So be it.

Happy Spring, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with me here.