Everything in its own time. Dang it.

It’s no stretch of the imagination to guess that I’m a little more impatient than most.


In the pre-baby days, I’d preempt my morning coffee with a redbull or other energy shot just to make sure the coffee knew it had a little competition in the “wake this girl up” department and didn’t dawdle. Not the biggest fan of pre-heating ovens. Hate waiting for my car to warm up in the winter for so many, many reasons.

And this weekend, the sidewalks in the neighborhood finally opened up enough for me to walk the dog for a whole HOUR and only get wet shoes once or twice from the massive snowmelt puddles. FREEDOM! Never mind the fact that every block or so, said dog and I have to walk in traffic for a few hundred feet to avoid the six feet of deep ice water…that doesn’t matter. We were out and walking and not slipping on ice! Wahoo!

The kids and I spend our Saturdays in a constant state of waiting for P to finish school and then to finish coaching in the afternoons. It gets tedious. In the winter, when there’s no choice, we stay in our pajamas most of the day and get pale and creepy looking from lack of sunshine and exercise. It’s true. By 3 p.m. I freak out and realize we have not had a whiff of fresh air in nearly 24 hours and invent an excuse to go to the grocery store just to blow our carefully laid out budget.

But come mid-April, the sun finds its way out and melts 8-foot snow packs in one afternoon. It brings to light all the garbage tossed on the lawns over the past six months and it accentuates our near-albino Alaskan complexions. It brings the funky stench of soggy, half rotten earth that wafts on the wind and assaults your senses, until you’re looking around like mad trying to find the pile of doo the neighbor dog left for you to step in. No worries. It’s not dog doo, it’s the aroma of Alaskan melt. Breathe it in!

And we act.

Mostly we act too soon, but a few frozen boots and socks later, we don’t really care. Mostly. Until laundry day, anyway. We buy sidewalk chalk, haul out the bikes, the construction toys, the kites. Everything. All at once. All on my front lawn. And we play until our noses are red and our fingers hurt, because, darnit, there’s sun out and the thermometer is above freezing!!

So this weekend, we head out to the coastal trail for a Saturday afternoon adventure on Scooter and Stroller. We bring our bubbles, our helmets, our snacks, our drinks and we find the park is FULL of other sun-seekers. Good on you, people! Nevermind that the lake is still froze as we walk past; surely the ocean has broken up and is back to normal.

Surely.


Then again, surely....not.

By the time we leave the little lagoon park and make our way to the honest-to-goodness trail by the ocean, we’re shanghaied by two to three inches of slushy snow that will not let Scooter nor Stroller pass through with any ease. Darnit! We head back to the lagoon area and putz around, checking out the four feet of water that actually is moving and we talk to the six half-frozen ducks crazy enough to cut their Florida vacations short by a week or two. (Yes, poor dudes looked half frozen and cranky. They missed the shuffle board, most likely.)

On the drive home, a little cold but still thrilled from all the sun and movement, Boy Wonder announces to me that spring is not here yet. That spring will probably never get here, and by the time that it does get here, it will already be summer.

And in that one statement, Boy Wonder has just cracked the code of the Great Alaskan Spring Mystery. You can’t rush it. You can’t force the snowy trails to hurry up or the grass to go from trodden-on muck brown to vibrant green. Can’t clear the mud holes in the yard before they are ready, or pull the frozen lawn gnomes out of the dead veggie patch before the ground is ready to give them up.

And by the time Nature gets the memo, we’re headlong into 24 straight hours of sunlight and a month called June.

Alaska: 1. My impatience: 0.