Pretend

From The Weakerthans’ “Watermark”:
But the airport’s always almost empty this time of the year,
So let’s go play on a baggage carousel.
Set our watches forward like we’re just arriving here
From a past we left in a place we knew too well.
Through my head all weekend.
I’m wishing my life away, dreading the weeks because they have just been intensely long and less than pleasant, contentious and challenging. I’m a big boy, I can take it, but I keep waiting for it to be over. Then on the weekends I collapse in a heap and avoid doing all the things that need to be done around the house. Many of them require warm weather, but not all of them. Instead I’m scanning in pictures of the past (not my past) and trying to bring them back to life. Looked out the window this morning at all the raspberry canes that will want pulling in a few weeks — they’re still the only things sticking up through the snow. There’s a lot of leaves underneath it, though. The ground is settling and there are cracks in the driveway, I really need to lay a coat of concrete on the foundation blocks, inside and out. I should spend the energy to replace the cellar windows. I need to reroof the garage and the porch. And somewhere in there, I’ll need to bike, run, blade, go off to other places. The enormity of doing it all keeps me from doing any of it. So do these just-shy-of-migraine headaches that come in with the weather — had one yesterday that nearly crippled me at the grocery store, just had to push through it without snapping my poor daughter’s head off.