You ever get that feeling you’re doing something terribly wrong, but it feels so right? That’s what happened today at a big home improvement store. We went there for the mundane task of purchasing a garbage disposal, but the bastards went ahead and fully stocked the garden section just so you could smell the smells of warm weather: fertilizer, soil, lawn mower oil as soon as you enter. You involuntarily walk over near the instruments of sunshine: hoses, garden tools, barbecues and bulbs. You tentatively approach them, touch them, smell them. Oh, you could get ahead of the game and buy them now, but what’s the use? They would stare at you, taunt you, mock you for being so anxious even as the cold and snow and ice still blanket your lawns making those purchases useless for another 6 weeks. I prefer to be half-full, however. I will buy the fertilizer. I will buy new garden hoses. I will buy a hoe and a rake. I will stock up on seeds. I will force spring into my psyche and winter fatigue out of it. I will enjoy every minute of it. Until spring actually arrives and I have to use all that stuff and waste a Saturday mowing my lawn…and bitching until the day I can use my skis again and light the fireplace and drink Jack Daniels on the rocks in my Lazy Boy without the interruption of mindless yard work..and dream about yet another spring..and how to avoid the tasks it brings.