Anticipation

When I start feeling the least bit stressed about something, my brain immediately switches to "what-can-I-look-forward-to" mode.  I start my spring semester of graduate classes tomorrow night.  Three days a week of 12 hour days, 2 days a week at home to do homework and look after house stuff.  It is a bit tight, but very manageable for a few months, especially when you have a wonderfully willing and helpful husband.  :)

Nonetheless, I feel like I'm about to dive back into the water, not to truly emerge again until May 17th. Most people have heard me talking recently about how much I've loved having real snow- snow that piles up in banks behind our house, snow for sledding and trekking and building.  The kind of deep snow that muffles the noise of life (or maybe people just stay home), but outside in the morning as the sun turns every branch into a diamond speckled scepter, it is blessedly silent- quiet enough to not only see your breath but to hear it.  The kind of quiet that doesn't happen during any other weather event.  Ahhhhh.

So then why today, did I find myself daydreaming of my garden?  Why can't I continue to enjoy our present state of wintery whiteness?  Craziness. All I can figure is that my coping strategy must go something like this.

Brain 1:  "Can I handle this again?  Four months of reading and writing and studying and family and church too? Am I crazy?  When is the drop/add deadline date again?"

Brain 2:  "Of course you can.  Soon that lovely patch of mulching leaves in the back corner of the yard is going to grow warm and soft.  You'll add a truckload of organic mulch and work your tools down into the earth and just imagine the smell... that earthy, mossy, wormy fresh smell... that's the smell of potential, of hope because what is more hopeful than a seed.  So see?  You'll be fine because you'll get to plant a garden before you know it."

In what world does any of that make sense?  Yet that's what I'm dealing with here.  Odd.