Ready for Spring!

I came home from work one day a couple of weeks ago  to find E had dressed himself to play outside.  The ubiquitous ties have since been replaced with a Superman cape.

Although all this snow is now gone, it's been below 40 degrees F most of the month. This weekend is promising to be gorgeous, and everyone at this point just really needs that to happen.

We're finishing out the semester, so I've not had a lot of free time or energy, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Though J is gearing up for a trip to Spain soon, and I'll be teaching a May-term course, so the excitement will continue for a little while longer, I suppose, albeit in a different way.

My house plans have not been neglected, however. I have been doing the best I can to keep up the daily maintenance and have been relentlessly decluttering. Last week I gave E's room a thorough cleaning, and it just feels so good to have nothing extraneous in there. In addition, there are three garbage bags of clothes by the front door to donate tomorrow and several boxes more ready to go to the consignment shop on Friday.

This was my hat when I was a baby. I love that Belalu wants to wear it.

I've been feeling stressed and overwhelmed with work stuff, and clutter just adds to my stress, but so does the idea of having to organize it and get rid of it. My personality doesn't really know what it wants: on the one hand, I hate clutter and stuff just laying around, but on the other, I am very sentimental and don't want to get rid of anything anyone ever gave me. All my work this week has made me I feel freer, and I really want to keep it up. When I have time to start on some bigger house projects this summer, I'll be more inspired and motivated to do them with a house purged of unnecessary stuff.

When I step outside and see all the work my yard needs, though, panic starts to creep back in. And that's when I am grateful for the winter-like spring we're having. I'm just not ready to go there yet, though I will be after next week. We were going to start seeds inside this year, but never got around to it for various reasons, and I'm not letting myself worry about it. All my house projects and plans are to improve my quality of life, not bring more stress and worry to it, so I tell myself this when I start to feel bad about not getting something like that done. There's always next year. Thankfully, we have a several great sources for garden plants in the area, and we'll just go that route this year. I am very excited for our Farmer's Market Saturdays to resume.
Dwarf arrived in the mail last week, though I've been finishing up next month's book club book first. I couldn't resist starting it, however. And I couldn't stop crying while I read it. I think I've read two or three chapters so far, and I couldn't.stop.crying. So, guess I won't be reading this book anywhere but home.

I have some updates on Belalu's latest Dr. appts, but I'll save that for another post very soon. (Hard to believe my baby's 20 months old!)

Hope your spring where you are is bringing you lots of sunshine and warmth.