Cold and blowy, snowy, white and wintery. Everyone is bitching about the weather as if the entrance into March was the entrance into Spring. But Spring is still at the end of the road. The vernal equinox is weeks away. March comes in like a LION, not like a lamb, no matter how pleadful and yearny and sick of February we are. February, that 2-bit floozy that overstayed her welcome, when we didn’t really welcome her in the first place. March gives us the cold shoulder at first. She’s aloof, her face is turned away…she has to warm up to us.
Barky looks BEAUTIFUL! That giant patch of white which was spreading across my head like lichen is now banished and I am years younger, even in my bounce. Why the hell do I wait so long? *looks at receipt, grimaces, remembers exactly why*
Walking through the little mall, I stopped in the jewelry store to ask about my near-to-breaking twisted curb gold necklace. Normally, it holds the diamond pendant that Anders gave me the morning after our wedding, but I haven’t worn it in months for fear of it snapping the final strand. They had twisted curb chains, but all their gold jewelry was RED next to my YELLOW 14-carat gold chain. I know I’ve heard this before, but it had never really registered…in Europe 18-karat gold is the standard, in the U.S. it’s 14-carat that dominates. The saleslady and I agreed that it wouldn’t really work to put a 14-karat pendant on an 18-karat chain, and when I looked at the price tag (SEK 1695) I decided it wasn’t a priority to spend that kind of money right now…especially since Barky had just wiped out the children’s college fund. Then I had a brainstorm and thought to ask her if they could possibly repair it, and they could! They have a goldsmith on call, and the price? 200 kronor! SCORE!
Passing the window display in the clothing store as I left the jewelry shop I saw a handful of child-sized manniquins dressed in brown-and-pink sporty ensembles that featured different sports slogans emblazoned on the garments. One unfortunate zip-front sweatshirt, open about an inch down the center, had the letters C H on one side and M P on the other.
“CH…imp?” I thought, and then laughed like a loon as I realized they meant it to be read as CHAMP. I laughed all the way to the car.
When I was in college at Michigan State, there was a 1-panel cartoon drawn by another student that featured in the school newspaper, with spunky line drawings of campus life. They were always spot-on observances and I really enjoyed them, cutting out the ones that seemed to have been addressed to me personally with their appropriate and palpable hits, and taping them to my dormitory room door. Several of them are still yellowing in my journal-scrapbooks from those years, and today I found the artist featured on Drawn! Her name is Ruth McNally Barshaw and she’s still doing her thing, sketching and observing, and she’s just sold a book. Way cool!