Normally, the switch from daylight savings to normal time and vice versa (Which are we on now? I can never keep track.) is occasion for grumbling all across this great land, but today, in Colorado Springs at least, everyone wore a smile. Why? Sixty-seven degrees of brilliant sunshine, bucko.
It’s been a cold winter here, overcast and dreary since December. For the last few weeks we’ve been thankful that at least the sun is up (even if hidden behind the clouds) by the time we have to scrape our windshields and go to work. Then we sprang forward into darkness again, and the kids are starting two weeks of CSAP’s (Colorado’s contribution to No Child Left Untested), and the streets of our fair city are cratered like the moon after the iciest winter this century. But today, nobody cared.
How nice was it? So nice, that when I got home my cat went outside to romp instead of doing the usual, which is to try to herd me towards her food bowl. So nice (springing forward helped, too), that I got to take a hike in my canyon after work. So nice, that after my hike I got to join all the other motorcyclists in town in a massive pick-up game of Dodge the Potholes.
I was pretty cranky about CSAP’s, too, because we’re trying to finish up our stories. Remember the stories? Two mice, Samson and Tinkerbell, and their quest to bring cheese back into their lives? Well, there was time to squeeze in a quick session with 3rd grade first thing and another with 5th in the afternoon (which we took outside, squinting at the mysterious yellow orb like moles). And two of my 5th graders have done such a clever thing that I had to let off a great yawp of joy. Luckily, we were outside.
In Chelsea’s story, the mice needed to pick a lock, and decided to use tomato sauce as a lubricant. How can a mouse open a can of tomato sauce? A problem. Back at the ranch, Michaela’s mice had managed to get a cheese pizza delivered to their front porch. Just as her Samson and Tinkerbell had turned themselves into little beach balls by stuffing themselves with all the cheese from the pizza, Chelsea’s Samson and Tinkerbell came wandering by, scrounging together the materials they needed in order to put their own plan into action. After the initial shock of meeting another version of themselves (Did you ever see a science fiction movie in which it turns out there’s another earth just like ours, except that people write backwards and drive on the wrong side of the road, sharing our orbit but on the other side of the sun?), the two pairs of mice help each other out and, I assume (the stories aren’t quite finished yet), eat cheese happily ever after.
And tomorrow, it’s supposed to be sixty-nine.