Weekly Winners: Spring Has Sprung!

And so has my back! The first really long stretch of decent, sunny weather means flowers are flocking to my beds, so I have to make them cozy.

Ended up hauling 17 bags of mulch yesterday, and I still didn't have enough! But the true advent of Spring means that I can think about putting this sucker away...

Don't know if you can see in the reflection and the blinding sunlight, but that's an ice scraper in the backseat. Just in case. Now, you Dear Readers who have stuck with me all these months know that I just love to indulge in a pedicure now and again...

But Spring really means that my piggies are going into Serious Dirt Farmer Mode for the time being!

Weekly Winners are brought to you throughout the blogosphere every Sunday by Sarcastic Mom.

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I didn't use very fancy equipment to acquire these shots. Try a Nikon CoolPix 4600, 4.0 Megapixels, 3x Zoom. The Wild One took her fancy photo equipment to college with her. She's the Artiste in the family, butofcourse!

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This just in: Veggie Mom has taken pen (computer keyboard) in hand to enter Scribbit's April Write-Away Contest. You should, too!

The Dog Made Me Do It!

The Random Complexity Writing Challenge; March; 581 Words!

John Grogan made me cry. My daughter said I wouldn’t. My SIL said I shouldn’t. But I cried anyway, the day that Marley died.

Marley, as most of you well know, is the name of an incorrigible Yellow Lab owned for 13 years by Grogan and his wife, Jenny. Over Christmas Break, while I was casting about for a gift for College Girl, I thought of Marley.

I’d heard the movie was atrocious, but the book way better. I went with the book.

College Girl accepted this stocking-stuffer from “Santa” with a knowing smile. She loves reading about animals, but her Mom has a track record.

I am, after all, the one who urged the child to read Old Yeller when she was in 4th grade. Poor kid cried and cried. Buckets. Blamed me for exacerbating her concerns about the health and safety of every family pet from there on out.

Oopsies! I had remembered loving the book when I was about 10. I’d forgotten that the dog dies in the end. But from what I’d heard, Marley and Me was a much lighter read than that.

So CG took Marley back to school. And, in between classes in Spanish Lit, history and a seminar on the Holocaust, she finished Grogan’s tribute to “The world’s worst dog.”

She said Marley and Me was a “good read.” Said she’d teared up a couple of times, “but nothing like Ol’dYeller. You know how that book ends, right Mom?”

Fast-forward close to four months. When I went to College last week to visit my peeps, I brought along a book. During the course of my visit, I finished my latest literary companion. So I turned to my kid.

“What about Marley?” CG queried.

“I don’t want to cry on the plane,” I retorted.

“Oh, Mom. It’s not that kind of book. You won’t cry. You’ll laugh, mostly.”

As I was preparing to leave toward the end of last week, I put my pocketbook and my reading material on the counter in Aunt Julie’s kitchen.

“You’re not reading Marley, are you?” The dismissive tone in Auntie J.’s voice was unmistakable.

“Well, sure,” I replied. “CG says it’s an easy read, and that I’ll laugh, mostly.”

Julie, who is the Mom to four boys and two dogs in real life, simply shrugged.

“I don’t know. It didn’t do much for me,” said the woman whose taste in literature I most admire. But Julie, much like CG, assured me that I wouldn’t cry.

“It’s not that kind of book,” she said. “It’s an easy read. You’ll laugh, mostly.”

Well, to tell you the truth, I did laugh a lot, much to the chagrin of the woman sitting next to me on the flight home. Hmmmmmmm…probably should add guffawing to the list of no-no’s in Veggie Mom’s Guide to Traveler’s Etiquette!

Didn’t quite finish Marley during the trip. It really is an easy read, though, and I digested most of it en-route. I had a couple of short chapters to go the next day when I decided to spring for a pedicure.

And that, Dear Readers, is the sad, sad ending to our tale. Marley does indeed die in the end. And Veggie Mom did indeed cry. So much so that the nail technician worried that her ministrations had hurt me in some fashion.

“No,” I said, reassuring her that my piggies felt just fine. “It’s this dumb dog. He just died.” So much for happy endings.

Spring is in the Air!

Another of Veggie Mom's contributions to the Random Complexity Writing Challenge. 347 words.

After hibernating, lo these many months, the toesies have come out to play.

Yup, went to the local nail salon yesterday afternoon and got the "full treatment." Some say that March Madness means that Spring is in the Air. I say the fun colors and skin-bearing daring of a pedicure signals the advent of the prettiest season.

My toes have a history, if you want to know the truth. I've always been known as the Girl with the Crusty Feet. My husband and children are blessed with skin so soft, it could have been transplanted directly from a baby's butt. Me, not so lucky!

I started getting pedicures as a way to smooth out those heels and spruce up those piggies. I have always had a hankerin' for going barefoot, so might at well play up the fact that my toes had disrobed, right?

Then, as the years flew by, it got to be a habit. No, I don't go to the salon every week...in fact, my feet pretty much hibernate, as far as glamor is concerned, during the winter months.

But when Spring has Sprung, when those crocuses and daffodils make a show of pushing up through the crusty top layer of the frozen tundra, it's time to take my crusty old feet in for a tune-up.

I indulged in a little "Spring Cleaning" yesterday. Yes, I got the heels scraped (and scraped and scraped..."How long has it been, Miss?" the technician queried), my nails cut and the obligatory dollop of Broadway Red enamel brushed across ten toenails.

But I also basked in a Sea Salt Scrub. Just had to exfoliate after all those months in thermal socks and sneakers!

I've assumed the pose above before~first, when Hot Tub Lizzy mandated we wear plaid on Election Day, and then again in December, when lamenting the Green Bay Packers' perturbingly pathetic season. Showing my piggies off again today, in honor of the advent of Spring.

Spring, indeed, is in the Air. But don't tell Bucky Badger~he's gone home to hibernate 'til basketball season starts again next November.