Spring. Ish.

Spring is here. Ish.

If you don't count the frosts. And the clouds. And the rain.

Then again, Iowans are very familiar with the maddening weirdness of a windy April day, where the sun glows warm, almost too warm, and yet a steady and icy wind blows from the direction of Saskatchewan, with periodic banks of clouds. You spend half the day throwing your jacket off as the rays bake through the fabric, and then shivering in the bluster and putting it back on. Off. On. Off. On. Just when you think you've had enough, it rains.

This is sort of how the last month has been for me. I'm off (coming out of the winter blues) I'm on (the tomato seeds sprouted!) I'm off (persistent wracking cough for a solid week). I'm on (the lilacs are blooming!)

While I'm waiting for the weather to even out so that I can start some outside projects, I've been working on a bunch of different things. Some of it is self-therapy, so I don't go crazy with impatience. Some of it is the usual family busy-ness. It's all over the map. So is this blog post.

I've been having fun with baking lately. I used to make a lot of my own bread b.t. (before twins, and yes, I do realize they're eleven years old), and I've been doing more of that again. It's been good to have the oven on during these chilly rainy days.

Also, cake. Because if you're impatient for Spring, why not celebrate Not Spring? 

We're coming up on the end of the school year, too, and that means extra projects. Like turning this kid into Albert Einstein for his big biography presentation. I had to share and brag, because is he not the cutest theoretical physicist you've ever seen? 

I'm also taking a photography class this month. That's another thing I'd like to write a longer post about, but the fact that I'm taking the class means I've been short on blog time.

This is me, experimenting with apertures for an assignment, or as I'm beginning to call it, "effing with f-stops." And a chicken. With lemons and limes. No, I don't really know why those things either.

(Basically, the background details come into sharper focus at higher f-stops, changing the depth of field.)

The bathroom project mentioned in the last post has come along as well, but since a lot of it has involved tedious plaster repairs and big buckets of plain white primer, I haven't updated readers. More is coming on that soon as well. I may even have better photos of it, though lilacs are always better subjects than cramped and outdated bathrooms.

I'll be back soon. I hope spring will be too!