Ah, Spring!

Annoys me. Or, rather, it predisposes me to annoyance. I friend of mine from some years ago recently blogged about how Spring makes her feel...lascivious isn't quite the right word...randy might be. You know,

"The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies."

(NB: no dolphins splashing in the above, queercat)

For as long as I can remember, though, I do get the characteristic Spring Fever, accompanied by itchy palms and feet, the irrepressible desire to open windows and just BE in outside spaces, the longing to flee. What accompanies it, though, is not the desire to spawn with strangers, but a sudden and deep distaste for the flesh explosion that particularly comes along with warming weather in previous cold climes. Everyone who teaches can identify, I'd imagine. You suddenly come face-to-ass with all that flesh-ness previously hidden under $90 sweat pants and Ugg boots. And, it really isn't just that. Winter brain fog melts into Spring anxiety. At the moment, for example, I'm incredibly annoyed that, while I recalled all three volumes of Edward Long's 1868 History of Jamaica, the library only held Volume 2 for me. I, of course, checked it out and went merrily home, believing that the three had been surely collected in the one quite imposing tome I had received. As it turns out, this isn't the case. Really, though, this is my fault, and this is the place at which curmudgeons--whether Spring feverish or not--go bad. Had I been paying attention, I would no doubt have stumbled home weighed down with all 2000 odd pages of the thing. Instead, I sit here grumpily writing about undergraduate skin folds and the idiocies of library search and hold functions. Clearly, I need a life.

Still, I remember being a freshman (since none of you knew me then, let me paint this picture for you: extremely doughy, long and crazy red hair, facial piercings, chain-smoking, with that mushroomy look one gets from spending virtually all of one's time in a tiny dormroom slogging through the Bible and really anything else that made me feel a little bit less like I was wasting my life) and hating all the healthy hippies with their frizbee and their dogs, making happy homes on the campus quad at the first hint of Spring. Maybe my annoyance is vestigial, but I don't suppose it really matters.