"How doth the little Busy Bee...."

I found out recently that a friend-slash-neighbor-slash-cousin used to read my blog, and I never knew! She saw a comment of mine on a post on a Facebook page for my high school and sent me a friend's request. She only lives a little ways down the road from my Mom's house and even closer down the road from her parent's house. She was a classmate of my sister Lois, is a second cousin once removed, and I went to school with her brother. So anyway, it was really nice to connect with her. I always thought she and her sister were two of the sweetest and prettiest girls I knew. She told me "I used to read your Dusty Pages and enjoyed reading about your family and learning more about my own thru your posts and pictures." I'm glad she let me know, and now I wonder how many other people I know or have known who might actually have stumbled onto this blog.

I am tired of winter! And I know I am not the only one. Traci DeSheles, a J-Land friend, posted a link to this funny US National Weather Service forecast for Nashville Tenn. today:

Enjoy the warm weather this week, Facebook friends. Nurture it. Cherish it. Remember it fondly. High temperatures at Nashville starting today and going through Saturday are expected to run 59, 66, 63, 70, 58, and 61 degrees. You could make the argument that since we were punished with such a long period of below normal temperatures, we now deserve the flip side. It's a legitimate argument. We do deserve that. But, alas, winter shall reassert itself at the start of next week. The ECMWF flashes the dread 1044 millibar high over South Dakota. The polar front jet slices through the southeast and lands just south of Tennessee at one point. And by this time next week, our flirtation with spring will be a vague memory. The fresh buttercups we clutch in our hands will frost over. We will be dragged back into winter like a hungry man invited to a feast and then asked to leave. We will wail and gnash our teeth. We will once again don our winter coats, our gloves, our big furry hats. And still, it will not snow."

That actually sounds like our own forecast, basically. I will enjoy it while it's here and try not to think too far ahead to the nasty weather we will probably once again have in a week's time.

As I announced on Facebook I'm trying to spend less time on that site, and, aside from playing Mah-Jong on there rather obsessively, I do seem to be doing well. I am not reading as many statuses, even family's statuses (I have the strangest urge to write "stati" as the plural of status!!!), and I am not posting as much or "liking" as many posts. 

I have so many things I want and/or need to get done in the next two months! Eler Beth is finishing up her high school curriculum, or at least she's supposed to be doing so. I have to admit that we have let a lot of things slide this year. As long as she can pass her test for her diploma, though, she'll be fine. She's making decisions about what she wants to do this summer and this fall regarding school and vocation. We have three trips coming up in the next several months for which I have to save and plan. And then there are things I want to do in my yard and to my house, inside and out.

I am going to try to do more writing in my blogs because I really want to. I am still working on the book I began in November, and I am leading the March discussion in the online reading group I belong to. So yes, my plate is rather full and I'm feeling pretty good about it. If only spring would come! In the meantime I'm all for clutching those "fresh buttercups!"