A young, male Walmart employee working on the same aisle noticed me looking at the dinners and started laughing with this annoying nose-snorting thing.  Quizzically, I check my fly to be sure it isn’t wide open.  When I see that it isn’t, I inquire, “Why are you laughing?”

With about three teeth in his head and spit escaping from his mouth while he talked/laughed, he blurts, “Those sat on the back dock all night and thawed out.”

“Are you serious?” I inquire.

“Yeah, I found them this morning and since they were still cold, they told me to put them back in the freezer.”

“Oh”.

Go Walmart Go.

I get the strange feeling that somebody is watching me.  I look over and see this:

It’s a fuzzy picture, but yes that is an Oklahoma gray tree frog.

So…  instead of screaming like a little girl and running through the house with shampoo in my hair, I very calmly and politely ask, “Could you pass the soap, please?”  I finish my shower with this frog just sitting there being still hoping I don’t see him.

Kermit now lives in my front yard somewhere.

Happy Easter to all.

Well.  Now you do.  And you thought you wouldn’t learn something new today.

I’m thinking about trying to make bricks out of mashed potatoes….

Just because.

Something about trees with flowers and leaves on them covered in snow that reminds me I live in Oklahoma.

UPDATE:  a commenter helped me identify this flower: It’s a “Grape hyacinth“.  Thanks!

The picture isn’t the best, but neither is my camera.   I’ve noticed four or five of these spring up during the last couple of days before it got cold. They appear to be coming up off of one small shoot with no leaves (yet).  The flower head is cone-shaped and the individual little flowers are kind of tube shaped, I guess probably because they’re closed up.  Haven’t seen them while open yet.

They were all right next to the house next to the henbit and random dandelions.   (Dandelions are quite edible, by the way… and yes, I will be attempting to make dandelion wine when it gets a little warmer.)

But I really want to know what the purple flower is.  If you happen to know off-hand holler, otherwise I’ll drive myself insane all night hitting google trying to figure it out.

As is typical of yours truly, I found my mind wandering a bit.  I rarely drink, but I keep a six pack in the fridge for those random times where a nice cold one just seems like it will hit the spot.  This evening seemed like one of those times.  So I crack one open, roll up some tobacco leaves, and sit on my front porch to see if there is any distant lighting to justify the weather rantings I’ve heard all day long on the radio.  I see none.  Sooo.. I just kind of sit there and zone out.

As silly as it sounds, sometimes I will do breathing exercises to calm the nerves and relax my body so I can take in whatever there is to take in.  This time I was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of spring’s definite birthing call.  The humble cricket.  It was the first time that I consciously heard them this year.  I smiled.  They seemed a bit unsteady as if unsure really as to what they were doing.  Poor guys, they’ll probably get it when some late freeze comes through.

It was kind of cool really, these little insects.  What do they care?  They know only a few things.  Eat, sleep, and make cool noises to attract a mate to make… well, you know more of themselves.

As my thoughts drifted, I thought of a good friend of mine.  His father passed away about a week ago.  I received news today that his mother has now also passed away.  I can’t begin to conceive what pain he and his family is going through. It really made me sad for him.

As I listened to the crickets some more, I realized that, yes, I do conceive his pain.  I had two consecutive losses one right after another less than two years ago.  One was losing my little brother to cancer, the other was the loss of my family to divorce.  While not exactly the same, the pain is just as real and can be reasonably compared.  I’ve been told that it takes, on average, two years to recover from the trauma of divorce or death in the family.  I haven’t quite reached that two year period, but I think I’m getting there.  And one of the reasons I truly am getting there is because of my friend who is now suffering his own loss.

His name is irrelevant for this blog, so I’ll just call him John.

John, I hope you’re doing ok, man.  I’m thinking about you and your family.  I know you pretty well, and I’m pretty sure that when I see you again you’ll just tell me to shut the hell up, and that you’re ok and all that, and then crack some joke about how the mayor is really a female Obama and that we should all run for the hills, but not until we hit the lottery.  Or something as silly along those lines.

But you can’t say that to a blog post, and I know you swing by here sometimes. So hey!  We are all thinking about you down here.  I hope that next spring season a year from now you’ll be sitting on your front porch drinking a beer, and all of a sudden you will hear those gryllidae chirping away and feel the small yet promising feeling of hope and renewal that I felt tonight.