. . All My Whites are Grey

What to do when February gets all long and stretchy, like warm taffy?  Only it's not warm.  Just long and stretchy. 

Me?  When I've grown tired of my winter wardrobe (something that others grew tired of within days of me rolling it out), I tend to eat desserts for breakfast.  At least on the weekends.  It doesn't accomplish much but I like to tell myself that smelling like chocolate before I get to the Sports page is kind of rebellious and fun.  Until 10 a.m. rolls around and I feel kind of crappy.  Anyway, maybe if I eat enough desserts for breakfast, I'll need a new winter wardrobe.  That'd be good, right?

I suppose I could watch the Olympics.  But the whole Russian thing has made them seem kind of creepy and dark.  And I was downright troubled after reading this morning's op-ed piece about Vladmir Putin choosing Sochi because it is so close to a troubled region.  Really?  Going mano a mano, just to prove something?  Sure, four out of five Olympics rings agree that there's still something good about the games, but I'm just not quite convinced.  Not yet, anyway.

Then there's that 24-hour dance video to Pharrel's song Happy.  It's a catchy little tune, but I'm not sure watching it for 24 hours would make me feel better.  I have had enough experience with overdoing the good things to know that, in the end, what's left is just...well, long and stretchy, myself included.

Come February, Mark starts pulling out his garden porn, dusty piles of last year's catalogs, all full of seeds and plants and rocks and things.  Like that America song, though, these catalogs don't do much for me.  Although I have always gotten a kick out of the "vegetable" sections, where they sell purple carrots and bi-colored corn (except in Kansas, where it's prohibited by law, by God). 

No, maybe the best tonic for February is just looking out the window, and hoping a cardinal lands on a branch of the crab-apple tree.  That's why I put out a pile of safflower each day.  To lure feathery, bright signs of spring from the knotty, bare limbs of the neighbor's wisteria. 

Wisteria...surely, that names comes from "wistful," to feel vague longing.  Yes, that's it.  I am longing for a cardinal, all dressed up in red, to break through the steely grey of a February day and make me remember spring again.