#348 • What Gets Left Behind

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When it finally warmed up for a bit and the clouds allowed the sun some air time, the snow melted as fast as a Popsicle* in mid-August. This year the Easter egg hunt around here was for lost gloves, rakes, chairs, anything green and some sanity. There are probably plenty of treasures up on the mountain too where chairlift lines are veritable graveyards of poles, gloves, hats, goggles and cell phones to name just a few. It's winter's great lost and found, full of surprises.

Unfortunately, the roads and lift lines are also littered with our trash - discarded beer cans and bottles, cigarette butts, coffee cups and nip bottles. Get a grip people.

*The name was trademarked registered by Frank Epperson of Oakland, Calif., presumably from (lolly)pop + (ic)icle. ... Seeing that it was a success, in 1924 Epperson applied for a patent for his “frozen confectionery” which he called “the Epsicle ice pop.” He renamed it Popsicle, allegedly at the insistence of his children.

#347 • Antidote To Spring Whiplash Syndrome

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It's pretty easy to pick up a case of whiplash throwing your head back to look up at the sky for signs of the sun, then flipping it forward to the ground searching for any hint of spring. If you slow the rotation down by stopping midpoint to look straight ahead, spring emerges. It's in the color. The color is subtle, but if you gaze long enough, you'll see it out there.

Toss into that gaze some memory, a smidge of wishful thinking, and a dose of desperation, and it becomes a veritable vernal springtime color show experience not unlike those spectacular Philmore East Light Shows of my youth.

Antidote To Spring Whiplash Syndrome 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

#346 • Is Spring Stuck in a Pajama Bottom Somewhere?

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I was in bed reading one night when suddenly the avocado and kiwi I had thrown into my clothing satchel the week before popped in to my head. Luckily they weren’t in as bad shape as the banana I found last month, and fortunately their skins were tough enough to hold innards under extreme pressure.

While I was rummaging for the avocado and kiwi, I discovered two bars of dark chocolate I had purchased during a two-for-one sale a while ago. I don't remember tossing them in the satchel. I do remember thinking I had bought two bars of chocolate, looked for them, but never found them. I figured I had left them in the shopping cart or worse, never bought them and just thought I did. As it turns out, they had settled on the bottom of the satchel - sunken under a sea of clothing. How does that happen?

Which reminds me, I found a missing dryer ball all the way down in the ankle of my pajamas. How does that happen? And while we're at it, how is it that spring gets lost? Is it too stuck in the bottom of some satchel or pajama bottom somewhere?

Is Spring Stuck in a Pajama Bottom Somewhere? • 16.5” x 10.5” acrylic unframed • $350

#345 • The Invisible Lady at the Miss Portland Diner

THE INVISIBLE LADY AT THE MISS PORTLAND DINER

I was meeting a friend at the Portland Diner the other day and was late.

I didn’t see her in the new addition, so stepped up to the original diner and glanced around to see if she was there yet. A waitress swooped down the aisle from the opposite direction. I told her I was looking for a friend.

She said, oh yes, she's right here and pointed to the booth to my right.

An old guy sitting on a stool hunched over a big piece of pie at the deserted counter across the aisle looked over his left shoulder at the booth at about the same time I did.

“Well, if she’s sitting there, she’s invisible,” he rasped turning back to his pie.

He was right - all I saw was a cup of steaming coffee.

The waitress quickly added that my friend was currently in the ladies room. She never cracked a smile and asked if I wanted some coffee.

I replied no thank you and fell into the booth trying to contain hysterical laughter in my cupped hands, afraid someone might think I was a head case.