Spring!

So here I sit in my office with no window to the outside world and only a 24"x24" skylight ten feet above my head giving me any sense of the fact that Spring has begun to show her presence. It's an opaque skylight at that. I love this time of year.... except for my allergies. But those are relatively controlled by my bottle of Zyrtec. I was smarter this year and bought the super-duper-extra large double-pack of them at Sam's. Though I'm sure when I run out, it will take me weeks before I remember to get them again and I'll also run out of tissues.
New Mexico springs are quite different from other places I've lived. In Florida, the change of seasons is sudden - one week it's warm and the next it's warmer. In Panama, it was either the rainy season (and you got rain everyday) or it was the dry season (no rain for months). In California, winter was bitter cold and wet and then went instantly into summer. But here in New Mexico, winter tends to drag it's feet during departure. There are little peeks into what spring with bring - the trees are already budding, some have flowered, the skinny squirrels are running amok having shed all their fat from the fall. There are even blissfully warmish days of sunshine which get you thinking that you can plan a glorious weekend outside, feeling the warm sun on your face, after spending a week long lifetime in a room with no real windows.
And then the e-mails start coming in about how your northern (only 300 miles) away offices are closing because of inclement weather. You walk outside at lunch to run an errand and feel the chill in the air and see some distant dark clouds. By 7pm on Friday night, a cold rain begins. "Oh, it's just a little rain. It'll be nice tomorrow," you say as you head to Wal-mart for something you forgot. Then as you're driving in the cold rain, something changes. The rain becomes... slower....colder....FLUFFIER! You wake up Saturday thinking you just dreamt it all. Put on your sandals to head outside and feed the dog only to quickly run back in shivering because there's snow on the ground and it's freezing cold! Ugh! So much for a sunny Saturday.
This week started off cold and windy. There were some ominous clouds yesterday but they cleared off by the afternoon. Got only one office closure e-mail yesterday, last night was lovely. This morning there was ice on my car.
New Mexico... you surely keep me on my toes. But I'm shopping for sandals today no matter what the weather brings!