In Which I Feed the Doldrums a Knuckle Sandwich

When you live in the land of eternal-rain, no one would blame you if you gave up on spring, if you stopped believing in daffodils and forgot entirely how to start the grill.

But I'm pretty sure you'd stay on the hook--rain or not--if you electrocuted--no matter how accidentally--a just-hatched baby bird and her about-to-hatch baby sister. Which is what I almost did when I turned on my porch light yesterday. And heaven help me if I nearly (though inadvertently!) fried some eggs.

But thank goodness, the little birds were fine, beaks and all, though the mother seemed none too pleased, and even less pleased when I climbed up the ladder with camera in hand. We of course kept enough distance to ensure mama bird would keep coming back.  Especially since playing foster mama to baby birds isn't exactly on my bucket list. I'd rather be the sort of proverbial early bird that drinks the coffee while it's hot, you know, as opposed to the literal kind that has to hunt for worms as penance for orphaning a pair of swallows.

::

For a solid week I've battled what Allen Ginsberg would call doldrums. Sometimes a spirit just sinks, like sand dunked mercilessly by a bullying tide. Sometimes the shoulders just sag and the spine scrunches impromptu, and who can figure out why?

I've been working slowly through Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, and I read this excerpt right in between mama bird tirades of my own (against bike races certain not to end well and mud splattered on the last pair of clean school pants). "But to give thanks is an action and rejoice is a verb and these are not mere pulsing emotions."

Then, in the same chapter, Ann posits that "theories and theology stillbirth unless they can take on some skin, breathe in the polluted air of this world, and make it happen." I nod my head, the one I just shook five minutes ago, frustration boiling as my babies squabbled. I know too well how to suffocate believing joy with anger, my entitled unbelief.

So back I go to naming gifts, the practice of thanks, the left uppercut power punch these doldrums deserve:

#207 Lone red tulip bursting on the soggy scene of my front yard
#208 Baby birds nesting in the lantern porch light
#209 Bicycles fixed, ready to ride
#210 "Mom, watch my bike riding trick. It will totally make you nervous."
#211 Zumba (the amount of fun I have is directly proportionate to how ridiculous I must look)
#212 Trader Joe's dark chocolate pretzel slims (nothing slim about them)
#213 "Sleeping in" until 6:15 today
#214 Caed "teaching Dani to read". "Let's start with the word ten. Now, sound it out like this...."
#215 Jelly beans
#216 Fat squirrels, keeping my old dog young (and thankfully staying juuuust out of her reach)