The end of winter.

When I was little I would sometimes be plagued by an overwhelming feeling of physical irritability...just like I needed to turn my entire self inside out. I discovered a cure for this feeling: Orange juice. It worked! Thankfully we always had orange juice in the house. When I was younger, it was concentrate from a can mixed up in a brown plastic pitcher. Then one year my mother started buying real orange juice. Those were the good years. I often want to go back in time and spend some time with my younger self, but you just can't do that. Except if you approach the edge of a black hole, the event horizon they call it, you start to slow time down, and it is thought, you may start to go back in time. 

I've been reading things I shouldn't be reading like this book called The Sixth Extinction and biographies on Tchaikovsky. When I say 'biographies' I mean the wikipedia page. Regardless. It's the wrong sort of reading for me right now. I've not been feeling so hot. Mentally, and also physically. And also not 'hot' like in the way women who look good feel.  I am officially the tired looking woman at Hannaford (our grocery store) who writes comment cards repeatedly advocating for the stocking of 'chubby hubby' ice cream. The teenage boy takes my card (again) and calls me ma'am. 

This too will pass. Days in, and days out.

Blondie here is our new maremma and she makes me happy when I sit with her, trying to get her to eat. She's four, and a bit shell shocked from switching farms. Over the last three weeks she's warmed up a lot and now will eat if I spend some time holding her paw and petting her first. She's the opposite of Puccini; thin, elegant, graceful, serious. I love her. Eric still prefers Poochi. 

And Nea. My best girl, getting a bit round in her older age. A skunky little sausage. You know I was always a cat person; grew up with a gaggle of cats but now I love dogs. 

Spring is finally starting to show at the farm, and in the worst timing, I've left for a few weeks of work in Europe. Writing this now from Amsterdam, a sunny Easter afternoon. Most of you are still asleep. My sheep likely laying down in a far corner of the field precariously close to the electric fence. When Eric wakes up and looks out the window he'll likely have a hard time seeing whether they are really there. He might worry for a minute pausing with the binoculars in hand, standing in the little bathroom upstairs, our lookout for pasture mischief. A tiny room, unfinished and full of dead flies. Impossible to find a paint color to match the old turquoise toilet and sink I insisted on putting in. 

He'll shrug it off, and go make coffee. 

I am ready to just let this winter go. 

I've been taking that physics class online that one of you suggested. And one of you sent me a beautiful japanese neck scarf (and one for Eric) and I thank you for that. Someone wrote me a card applying for an apprenticeship. You people are loving, and always with me.