We’ve got that won­der­ful nasty mud dirt gross road gunk yuck that is left when the snow starts to melt in the mid­west and every­thing is caked with salt­wa­ter stains and road grit and the grass is life­less mush in soft black or clay mud and the once pris­tine white snow looks like a bag of bad Snow­caps candy dumped on a nasty movie the­atre floor and kicked around a bit… and dri­ving any­where puts this quar­ter of an inch thick coat of slimey con­stantly wet haze all over your car… and then the fog starts and the air is soupy with a cohe­sive mist of all the nasty par­ti­cles on the ground that have been absorbed in the air just high enough to whirl around you… and the horses start to look like raga­muffins get­ting sucked in to the barn­yard mud like Artax and Atreyu from Never End­ing Story and you start yelling at them to ‘fight the sad­ness! Fight the sadness’…

and you are so sick of slough­ing off mud from your boots, your pants, your horse, your tack, your garage floor, your foyer, your dogs paws that you con­stantly have to wipe every time they go out to do their busi­ness less they track it through the house…and the sky is some ugly depress­ing form of grey you’ve never see in any cray­ola box and you think to your­self ‘now I know why Seat­tle has the high­est sui­cide rate’ just after the thought of ‘where’s my damn xanax and a tan­ning bed cuz I need some damn vit­a­min D expo­sure and a vaca­tion even if it is just in my head’…and then you find your­self search­ing for new warm areas to move to and fan­ta­siz­ing about how best to make a plan of attack for con­sol­i­dat­ing all the junk you’ve col­lected over the years and pack up the horses, cats, dogs, kids, hus­band (nah, leave the hus­band take the canoli) and get out of dodge because you sim­ply just. can’t. take. another. year. of this crap.…

and then.…just when you are on the brink of turn­ing your out­door arena in to a rock gar­den that doesn’t need drag­ging and stomp­ing towards the pas­ture intent on throw­ing a fit worth of rumplestiltskin…the sun breaks the mist, the air warms and dries a tad, the red haze of vision you just had clears and you find your­self uncurl­ing from the hunched over, water-sodden, mud-caked, growl­ing, snarling, snappy, eagle-clawed, grumpy cabin-fevered mess that you were and stand­ing in the mid­dle of the barnyard.…with the sun peak­ing between bud­ding trees…an eye­brow raises, you sniff the air and smell spring…and some­how there must be an aphro­disiac that comes with that deep breathe because you let it all go and become human again…