Hatching (and a Wee Story)

To me, the best time to turn over a new leaf isn't New Year's Day. It's still cold then, meaning the earth is still hibernating and so am I. I'm also just coming out of full holiday mode at the beginning of January -- probably not even back to work yet after whatever vacation I took to celebrate the season. I'm not ready to go from that state of being to making self-improvement plans and trying to be productive in any meaningful way. 

"Pre-spring" is a much more natural time for that. It's getting a little warmer, which makes it easier to get in the mood for positive change. Lent also starts, so I'm already primed and ready to put the brakes on the old self-indulgence engine for a while. I've been in kind of a low energy funk for a while, but I feel pretty prepared for Ash Wednesday day after tomorrow. This is a challenging time of year for me, but an exciting one as well.

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That said, I felt like trying to snag myself a real bank account and maybe a line of credit a few days ago. To my very pleasant surprise, I was actually approved for both. My credit's been such shit for such a long time, I've grown completely used to living a cash only lifestyle over the years. Apparently by now though, it's been so long since any credit problems I might have once had that I'm seen more as someone with no credit at all than I am a potential risk with bad credit. (I confirmed this with an actual credit check.)

Grower of Onions

In just a few weeks, it will be springtime again. And I will be 39 years old one week from Saturday. We're in the middle of our second Lent together. I do have additional thoughts and reflections on Lent in particular, but as some of you may already know, this particular blog isn't really the place where I prefer to keep them. Instead, I'll record some random goings on from life in general.

You know how you'll have a huge bag of onions and when you don't quite get to that last one in time, it winds up sprouting? Well, this time around, we elected not to throw the poor thing in the garbage for being resilient (and therefore less than edible). Instead, Seth planted it in a little pot and we named it Saul.

At present, Saul is hanging out on the little table we keep in the middle of our bedroom. I know he's just a sprouted onion, but I'm nevertheless reminded of how much I used to enjoy keeping plants and making things grow. I like observing the way Saul's little cylindrical onion leaves keep reaching out toward the sunlight wherever it happens to be at the time. (People really do forget that plants are living, amazing things.) We've been talking about maybe doing a little cleaning and straightening in our room so that we'll have places to keep more plants if we like -- some edible and others merely decorative.