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Just as I am over my no good horrible very bad cold, Bookman has decided it looked like such fun he’d give it a try. Only he has discovered it is no fun at all. Whereas it took me a week to progress from feeling mildly under the weather to feeling bad and two days after that to make it to horrible, he is wasting no time. He began at bad for one day and then moved right to horrible the next. While I am sorry he is ill and has a dreadfully sore throat and no voice, I must admit it is refreshing to be able to babble on and not be interrupted. It’s marvelous to be able to babble at all. Bookman is quite the yakker and it is often difficult for me to get a word in. But now, now he can do nothing but listen. Granted, he is zonked out on cold medicine so I might as well be talking to a wall, but since the wall looks remarkably like Bookman, I can delight in being The Voice in the House.

It is also a good thing Bookman hasn’t been very hungry. While this girl can make a production in the kitchen for Solstice, when it comes to every day cooking, she is a fish out of water. Canned soup is a blessing. So is cereal. In two moments of lucidity Bookman did manage to make waffles for breakfast today and pizza for lunch, but I think it was because he was desperate for something besides cereal and soup.

Between his naps this weekend he managed to read Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel. Through gesturing, he assures me it is funny and he laughed a lot even if it wasn’t out loud because his throat hurt too much. He decided to read the book because he needed something light and because he found out it is coming out as movie in November of this year. He has now passed the book over to me and indicated I had to read it as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, I am in the middle of too many other books to start that one at the moment. One of the downsides of having as many books on the go at once as I do is sometimes I find myself in the middle of all of them and nowhere near the end of any of them. While I don’t read in order to check books off a list or tot up the numbers, there is a certain satisfaction in finishing a book. When I find myself stuck in the middle of everything I am reading I get a bit of the doldrums. There is no excitement of starting something new and no pleasure in completion. This doesn’t happen very often, thank goodness, but when it does it is a bit of a downer even when I am enjoying what I am in the middle of. The book I am closest to finishing is The Canon by Natalie Angier and I still have about 150 or so pages until the end. I am liking it very much but hope to have it done by the end of the week or sooner.

Other things I read this weekend include the novel Testing the Current by William McPherson which is all kinds of good but slow reading. And I read some of How We Became Posthuman by N. Katherine Hayles. That book too requires slow and careful reading because it’s a thinking sort of book. I also read some good essays and reviews in both the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books. On these both I am woefully behind the rate of their arrival. I was all caught up at the beginning of the year but have now slipped so I am two issues behind the current one for them both. I’m feeling like I need a nice long vacation just to catch up on my reading! I have to remember to buy a lottery ticket once it gets up to an obscene jackpot amount. If you recall, one of goals for 2013 is to win the lottery so I can quit my job and read all the time. I am aiming to achieve this in early April for the best birthday present ever. Don’t scoff. It could happen.

Ok, I have to cut the rambling short this evening. I need to go make myself a lunch for tomorrow because I can’t count on Bookman being able to make it for me in the morning. Then I have to set the coffee pot timer and generally get all my ducks in a row so I can get out the door on time sans assistance. After that I should be able to read for a bit before going to sleep.

As the famous line goes, “spring waits for no one.” Okay maybe it is time and not spring but if you measure time in seasons it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? All this to say I’ve spent a good portion of my day out in the garden clearing away the dregs of winter. I got a lot done but there is still much to do.

Nonetheless, by this evening the crocuses I had found valiantly trying to bloom beneath the winter mulch were perky and bright with their purple flowers opening up to the sunlight. My pussytoes are beginning to send up little white furry buds and my pasque flowers are unfurling their ferny leaves. The tulips are about six inches tall and soon will be sending up buds. Th peony is also emerging from sleep and poking up from the ground. I expect if the weather stays as mild as this (62F, 17C) I’ll have big gorgeous pink peony flowers by the end of April instead of the end of May.

I had not planned on spending most of my day outdoors in the garden, only a little of it. But after I got going it was hard to stop. That and the thought of not finishing cleaning up the flower beds in the front yard and leaving fresh green shoots trapped beneath soggy leaves made me feel guilty. I don’t have the energy to do much in the garden during the week after work so the poor plants wouldn’t have gotten any attention until next weekend. Couldn’t have that.

As it is, I haven’t gotten to any of the flower beds in the backyard yet. I noticed one of my clematis is already greening up and my climbing rose has small leaves on it too. The honeysuckle also has leaf buds on it. Crazy because it is a month early for this to be starting.

Even with the warm winter I didn’t expect spring to arrive so soon. Living in a cold climate (zone 4 for you gardening buffs), I find the first half of winter to be a wonderful time for relaxing and recovering from the busy gardening season. By the start of January I am already thinking about what I might like to plant in the spring. By early February after winter has done its worst and the days are getting noticeably longer, I begin yearning for spring (forgetting completely about the allergies that will also sprout up). And yet, year after year as spring draws nearer and I am anticipating the ground thawing and getting out to clean up, I am always taken by surprise when the warm days arrive. I was so surprised by spring this year it took a whole week of gradually worsening allergy symptoms before I realized what was going on. I heartily thank the medical establishment for the invention of truly non-drowsy antihistamines and antihistamine eye drops. I would not be able to bear spring or later summer without them.

Enough of my garden rambling for one day. I will endeavor to have something appropriately bookish for you tomorrow.