Welcome, spring.

Welcome, spring --
Glorious, green and new.
Welcome soft rain on new grass;
On flowing places
shadowed and quiet and just beginning.
I know you,
welcome home.

I made a new poem. Its becoming a thing.

I love this time of year -- tulips and daffodils and hyacinth bobbing their spring-bulb heads in the soft afternoon rain. Grass is green and starting to grow crazy-like. It gets ahead of the urban grass-trimmers this time of year. I think maybe it is because it is often raining in the afternoon when they get home from their 9-5 work day or maybe it is just because it just grows so fast this time of year? Anyway, it is wild and new and floppy-haphazard. It pleases me to see the crazy little things that pop up in the midst of the grass-forest -- random grape hyacinth and lily of the valley and crocus making their grand escape from the garden . Be free little spring bulbs, be free!

I live right around the corner from Highland Park in my current little apartment. My landlord is raising the rent and I am poor, so it may not be my current abode for long, but for the time being I am right around the corner! I walk there often, usually daily, though not this week*. It has been wonderful seeing the seasons turn from deep winter, white and crisp, to burgeoning spring ripe with pregnant buds of flowers soon-to-bloom. Right now, the lilacs are fat and ready to burst open, just in time for the Lilac Festival. For those of you unfamiliar, the Lilac Festival takes place every year in Highland Park, which is home to a huge assortment of gorgeous Lilacs. I think (though I may be wrong, the facts must be corroborated), over 1000 Lilac Bushes are planted there. It takes place during two weeks in May and it starts this Friday. I haven't traditionally been a huge Lilac Festival goer, but as I live around the corner I think I'll pop in to hear some music now and again.

Spring brings me wonderful packages in the form of blooming things, slow walks and sweet smells and quiet moments... and this year, visitors:

• The first visitor arrives this weekend. On Saturday night, my sister arrives from Chicago for a short visit on her way to New York City. In case you were wondering, I hold my super-fabu-great-o-rama big sister in unconditional positive regard. She's great (she's a costume designer, makes her own line of jewelery with nuts and bolts and gears, can write with her toes and has a lovely singing voice)! She's sweet (she used to sing me to sleep at night when I was a wee thing)! She's brave (she is picking up her life in LA and traveling out west to make a more fulfilling career for herself)! Plus, she's my sister!
• The second visitor is not so much a visitor as a much anticipated arrival. On Tuesday evening, which is my birthday (thats 5/13, folks), Awesome Kelly arrives in Rochester! Yes, it is true. On the evening of the day of my birth, after finishing the world's most arduous two weeks of test/final/school/life intensity that morning, she'll be making the 5 hour drive to Rochester. Which is just sweet and, I am beginning to realize, typical of her. I am gushing a lot today about spring and people I hold in positive regard but I can't help it. What time is it? It is springtime and the flowers are blooming! ...and, in case the name didn't clue you in, I am of the ardent personal opinion that Awesome Kelly is, well, awesome. I can't even begin to say how pleased and excited I am about her arrival! I might pop from excitement! ...Well, I might.
  

In other news:

• *I have f-ed up my back. I did it at work, slipped on ice chips. It sucks and I am feeling restless and overtired 'cos it hurts and makes it so I can't be as active as I like and it keeps me awake at night. Soon. It will get better soon. I have hikes and expeditions and positions I'd like to explore. So yeah. Sooner is better.
• I am *also* in the middle of working on my Statistics final, which I hope *not* to flunk. I think I am missing the statistics synapse in my brain. I really do. I look at it and my head goes all fuzzy. Maybe it's just panic clouding my thoughts. I dunno. I finished the first two questions, so there's that.
  
• I have made the decision to finish out this year with the MS/PhD program. I promised myself a year, which will be complete as of this summer. I am seriously considering alternate options for my career trajectory. I'll write more about that another day when I have more solidness under my feet.

And that, as they say, is that.