It Was About Time

This Spring thing is slow to get started. I remember reading that Voodologists (Yes, I made that up.) at the National Weather Service were looking over their winter road kill, reading the signs in squarshed raccoon and 'possum and had decided this seasonal event we call "spring" was to be colder than usual in my neck of the woods. I just shrug. After the winter we've had, 42 degrees is downright balmy and enough cause for us to be on the deck for a few minutes, until they get spooked by something.

Even the girls have cabin fever. Pilchard seems particularly anxious to be outside, even for 5 minutes.

She will sit by the back door, looking out onto the deck and when I walk into the kitchen, meow at me. I can count on her going out if I leave the back door open while emptying the car or moving the garbage and recycling to the curb. It's not a long time. When I make a move to go back inside, they come in, but the desire for spring to arrive is in all of us.

Over the past weekend, it got warm enough that I decided to do something radical. I washed my new winter coat. In order to facilitate this, I didn't hang up the coat. If it was in the closet, I'd forget. You laugh, but I know me. I draped the coat over the side of the recliner.

Step 1 then becomes a negotiation on my getting the coat versus Mija wanting some place to sleep. Cat treats work wonders in these negotiations.

One of the attractions of the coat was its ability to be separated into component parts.

The fake fur strip unzips off the hood. The hood detaches from the coat, although I don't know quite why I'd want to do that. The lining unzips from the coat. I suppose if I wanted to wear the coat as an all-weather jacket, I could do that by removing the hood and the lining. But this is a winter coat and so all these pieces are why I bought the thing in the first place. I did separate the lining from the coat so it would wash better and tossed the whole thing into the machine on delicate cycle.

It washed like a dream. See, over the course of the winter, with all the running about I have done, I have spilled several mugs of hot cocoa and hot tea on the coat and eaten countless lunches while wearing the coat. I didn't wash it from the time it arrived in the mail until last weekend so it just started to smell used. I hung the lining and coat in the bathroom and cranked up the heat. It dried nicely. When it was thoroughly dry, it was very easy to reassemble although zipping something together with fur on it means you spend time fishing fur strands out of the zipper. (No, this is not real fur, not even rabbit dyed to look like something else. I won't buy anything with real fur on it. I'd like to know how they make fake fur look so realistic, however.)

So, it's hanging in the closet all nice and sweet smelling for another year. Oops. I probably jinxed it. We'll get a blizzard in a couple of weeks and I'll need to wear this again. I haven't moved the snow shovels to the basement for just that reason.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb