Five things making me say that spring can’t arrive soon enough

1. My overcoat is a mess. I have a really nice winter overcoat that I’ve been wearing every day since late November or so when the weather started getting cold. The problem is that it is long overdue for some TLC. It’s got a couple of scaly patches near the cuffs where I spilled some soda without noticing and let it dry in place. It’s also missing one of its three front buttons, and another one is getting perilously loose. This is really not a difficult situation to remedy, since all I need to do is drop off the coat at the dry cleaners and ask them to fix the buttons after they run it through the low moisture short cycle. The problem is that I’m still wearing the coat every damn day, and I’d be hypothermic waiting for the Metro in the morning without it. The arrival of warmer weather will herald my ability to put the coat away for the season, right after I temporarily relinquish it for a good spiffing up.

2. The garage is soooo close to being unpacked. I made a little bit of progress on the garage over the weekend, breaking down some of the large pile of empty moving boxes for the recycling collection and putting away a few other random things so that those now-empty boxes could also be broken down. But the fabled pirate bar is still occupying a large footprint (keelprint?) on one side of the garage, and it won’t be relocated to the basement until it can safely be carried downhill from the driveway to the back deck and in through the lower-level sliding glass doors. The snow on our deck is melting ever so slowly (I have a terrible sense of absolute direction, but I think the backside of the house faces north?) but once the pathway is clear, the bar can be liberated from drydock and I can finish organizing that corner and we can start using our two-car garage to actually, y’know, park two cars.


3. The dog is fruiting out. Much as we love our little mutt, the consensus between my wife and me has been that lately he has been severely overplaying the long-suffering, neglected yet loyal furry companion schtick. Not much has changed around the homestead; the dog has had a year and a half to get used to the little guy running around and getting in his face. I’m beginning to put some of the blame on canine cabin fever. I am ashamed to admit it, but I can’t remember the last time I took the dog for a proper walk. He used to get two a day, morning and night, but ever since the Big Blizzard it’s been highly undesirable to go out in the dark and cold AND trudge through the snow, especially when simply letting the dog scamper out into the fenced-in backyard has been an option. It’s an option that keeps us from having to clean pet messes off the carpet, at least, but the evidence is mounting that it’s not an option that keeps the mutt happy. He gets walks occasionally when my wife’s days off from work coincide with weather conducive to a mommy-baby-and-dog outing, but I really need to reinstate the regular outings. Spring will just make that commitment a lot easier to live up to.

4. I seriously need to shake up my commute. The shoulder-to-shoulder bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-66 is undeniably getting under my skin. Before my stress level gets into the unmanageable range, I’m going to start looking into other options. One of those is the county bus system, which allegedly has a direct express from my neighborhood to the Pentagon (from whence I can either hop on the Metro Blue Line or, I’m pretty sure, use one of the free shuttles that goes to satellite DoD offices like the one where I’m currently gigging). Of course, I still need to ascertain whether or not there’s commuter parking near the bus stop – although truth be told it’s pretty close to my house and I wouldn’t mind walking, assuming it was both daylight and above freezing. The other potential shake-up would be my long-promised reassignment to a desk of my own at my employer’s Fairfax HQ instead of the DoD office cubicle I currently commute back and forth to. But I’m not holding my breath on that one, even though the last word I heard on the subject was that it would probably happen “sometime in the spring”. Uh huh.

5. I miss baseball. The Super Bowl was oddly anti-climactic (not involving either my team or my wife’s and taking place mid-blizzard which prevented us from attending a mood-enhancing party) and the Winter Olympics were a pleasant enough diversion (wherein my wife and I somehow managed to get a little Canada (her) versus USA (me) rivalry going for the hockey finals) but I am feeling a sports void that will only be filled by the annual rebirth of our national pastime and the commencement of yet another AL East pennant race. The best thing about the few remaining weeks of winter is that it gives me a little more time to memorize the lyrics to “Here Come The Yankees!” in order to counterbalance the “Orioles Magic!” song my wife is forever singing to our poor, conflicted son. His eventual therapist better not be a Red Sox fan.