OMG *sneeze*

It's springtime!

There are good and bad things about spring. On the good side there are flowers and sunshine and a little more warmth generally. Personally there is also the triumphant feeling that I have survived winter with only a small amount of post-traumatic stress. I hate winter and I love summer. If I had the money I would probably swap hemispheres every six months and forget the strange appearance my toes take when I've forgotten to wear socks and then forgotten that my feet are cold because I can't feel them anymore and they look a bit dead and lifeless, actually.

So spring is good because spring means the end of winter, but it's also bad because winter isn't going to let go without a fight.  Here in weather-schizophrenic Melbourne, winter puts up quite a valiant show, occasionally overpowering the blue skies with violent downpours, turning nice romantic walks in a sunny park into... well, icy romantic walks in a cold, wet and rainy park. (see that pun? I kind of did that by accident and then laughed when I noticed, so it's staying there and I'm sorry) This happened the other day and my boyfriend made a tent out of his own body to protect me from the rain. It worked surprisingly well; I didn't even notice how badly it was raining till I touched his drenched back. But what better season than spring for chivalry?

Another reason to dislike spring is hayfever. It's not a problem if you don't get allergies, but I do. Every itchy-rashy-sneezy one there is. I spend every spring in a haze of watery eyes and conversations interrupted by sneezes. My mum says I look like kitten left out in the rain when I have a cold or something similar, but I think she's being nice, that's a far too picturesque image to use.

I watched an episode of Inspector Rex once (I used to watch it every week before he went to Rome and it just wasn't the same...) Where Moser met a charming young lady who sneezed when she got excited. At least that's what the subtitles said, they were speaking in german so maybe she said something a lot more saucy and the translators were having a joke on us poor Inspector Rex viewers. I hope not, because I sneeze when I get excited too, but I think it's mainly coincidence.

This is what I did over the weekend...

I also wrote my english essay. Eventually.

 I finished it and handed it in at 2.00PM monday, three hours before the deadline. Finishing an english essay always results in mixed feelings of joy and angst. There's the joy of finally getting to the end of 1,500 words (yeah, yeah I know. 1,500 words is nothing and I should be able to write it in 3 hours while sleeping, but I can't do that. I stare out the window a lot thinking meaningful things, like how speedily clouds can drift when they put their minds to it.) then there's the angst of doubting the quality of those 1,500 words while knowing that you're definitely not going to re-write anything more than a couple of words now you've found a reasonable end to the conclusion (something other than "and..yeahhhh...")

And now we have the added trouble of getting those few pages to the seventh floor of an eleven floor building that sways in the wind. And seems to be held up completely by torn up milk crates and elastic bands. I'm actually not joking about that. There is some steel scaffolding but I doubt that holds much of the weight. 

So the weather was amazing over the weekend. After the very long, very cold winter we've just had I would have been out frolicking (is that something 19 year olds are allowed to do? Or is it just lambs and toddlers? ) in the sunshine, but thank you Chinua Achebe for writing a book that would end up on the first year english reading list. It's obviously all your fault. Obviously. 

So to appease my need to get a tan whilst feeling slightly productive, I took my laptop outside to write. I bet you didn't see that coming. The results? I haven't noticed any tan, but it may be hard to tell because I still have my tan lines from last summer due to severe burning. Severe meaning it hurt to sit down for a few days after falling asleep in the sun. And as for my essay, it's hard to say whether my vitamin D related happiness contributed much to my clarity of thought, especially considering the time I spent peeling my maniacally dribbling cat off my computer screen. Or lifting her off the keyboard after she had deftly typed "killllllllllll" into the middle of my essay. Or carefully extricating her sharpened claws from my thigh.

Once Catlady Catface (or Meg) had adopted my cardigan to give her loving attention to, I was quite distracted by trying to remember the rhyme that children say when blowing the fluffy seeds off dandelion heads. I almost googled it but didn't because I was working. Instead I tried to blow the seeds off the dandelion. I failed quite horrifically and ripped them off instead.