Seasonally Challenged

What joyous mixups... I've been corresponding on email with people in several different time zones (and continents!) and have at times become so intent on the correspondence that I lose track of what season and time zone I am in.

What hasn't helped is April weather acting like November, or sometimes February, or sometimes May, here in hometown. I keep thinking we're heading into fall, since after every nice day we get rain, hail and dropping snow levels; we cooked red cabbage tonight as part of dinner, and I use it to color Easter eggs -- they come out a brilliant robin's egg blue that way, oddly enough; so I suddenly got confused enough to forget we already had Easter over three weeks ago.


A getaway weekend last weekend found us a four and a half hour drive north, and we lost four weeks of spring in the process there, too: here, the leaves are coming out despite the wild winter, the blossoms are mostly gone, and the grass is growing like mad. There, daffodils were still blooming, and the fruit trees just hitting their peak, but no sign of leaves on the trees yet.

And one of the towns we visited (Port Townsend) is an old Victorian town which looks as though all efforts to bring it to this century are failing -- the romantic ghosts of old buildings and former citizens are vivid and strong, and those of us in the present fade in comparison. Port Angeles, by comparison, is much more bustling and energetic, and has blended all kinds of time periods together. It too is an odd mix: murals on walls of historic district buildings depict Native American settlements, a 1930s aluminum ferryboat which looks like a giant version of either a flying saucer or a motor home; then, there is a brick courthouse whose bell tower clock sounds the hours so that people living or staying nearby fall back a century or so and don't need their own clocks, the courthouse sits next to a big Safeway store, which is next to a few older houses and some new hotels and a senior apartment building. All a joyful jumble of old and new.

What's a person one card short of a full deck to do? ! Except relax and enjoy the ride....