What is leave?

- A pause that only makes everything after it so much worse. ((All Quiet on the Western Front))

It's raining outside, and the occasional rumble of thunder makes it feel more like a foggy spring morning than the first week of the new year. The air is tinted a strange yellow color through the raindrops on my window screen. The snow started melting drastically a couple days ago, about the same time our tree refused to light. It's as if Christmas has gone and is now reaching back to pluck away whatever remnants it left behind. Mom even threw away a tin of Christmas cookies that Dad and I weren't quite finished with.

Some might enjoy the warmer weather. Dad went out without a coat on the other day, excited that the temperature had reached 30 degrees. I, on the other hand, rather like turning on my heating blanket to a toasty 8 and falling asleep while my toes search out the warm spots in my bed. I almost prefer the cold of the bathroom linoleum on my bare feet; it makes the reward of crawling back in bed so much more worth it.

I think the mornings are definitely my favorite, while Mom's still in bed and Dad's at work. I lie on the love seat with my book (first All Quiet on the Western Front, then The Good Soldier, and now A Room with a View), my subconscious listening to the tick of the grandfather clock while I'm completely absorbed in the black letters on the page. And I hear the clock strike 8...then 9...and I realize that while my body has been lying on the love seat this whole time, my mind and emotions have been racing through Germany and England and Italy with characters deep, pensive, and true.

Why is it that I only seem to find the books I want to read when I've so little time left? Now that second semester swiftly approaches, I have a good 5 books in my sight that I want to read with less than a week left to read them. I'm sure if I devoted myself to only that, I could do it. But I get distracted by the sounds of the football game and the warmth of the blanket and the sleep that beckons me after a long Sunday morning. Only a month left of football season. Why must everything come to an end?

Things that don't have to come to an end, no matter the season: Lindt white chocolate truffles, the Glenn Miller orchestra, House marathons, friendships, knitting projects, my list of "to read"....

Why, I remember on that afternoon I saw a brown cow hitch its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and the black and white one was thrown right into the middle of a narrow stream. I burst out laughing....I chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest of the day. Because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black and white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. It is just so exactly what one doesn't expect from a cow. ((The Good Soldier))