winterbadger | life is, just for a minute or two, very good

The weather has been great; cool but pleasant yesterday, rain overnight; today it will be warm, nearly 80*F, and sunny. For more than a week now, my fasting blood glucose has been below 126. My weight is down to a range it hasn't been in three years. I got a very positive annual review. And I've been dating someone really nice for a couple of weeks now, and we are really getting along well.

For right now, I'll just call her The Teacher (she teaches in a local elementary school). She's smart and funny and pretty. She's a huge history geek, likes soccer, appreciates cats, and loves books, so you can imagine how well we get on. We had dinner Friday; on Saturday I picked her up and we shopped for a new hermit crab for her class (whose previous pet met an untimely end) and then I made her dinner; and last night we traded some affectionate emails. She's coming for dinner again tonight.

I know better than to expect that changes for the good always last. The weather is supposed to get colder again tomorrow. The contract I work on is up for recompete, and there's no guarantee we'll win. I need to keep working on diet and exercise, or all the hard work will be wasted. And I've had relationships start well and end badly in the past.

But, just as equally, past disappointments do not ensure future ones. I'm very hopeful about things between me and the Teacher. Clothes that used to feel tight feel loose. I feel better than I have in a while. And Spring is coming...

Sunday was the anniversary of my Dad's death; I'm very sad that the Teacher won't ever meet him, or my Mum. I think they'd like her, and vice versa. But Spring makes me think of him, because he was once, in a film for one of his M.Ed. classes, the little goat-footed balloonman...

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

-- e. e. cummings