February is a better month than January. Mostly because it’s around ten percent shorter.
At least February is honest with us. January sneaks in with duplicitous joviality – kicking off with a party and then spending the first day as a holiday. The segue is appreciated, I suppose, but it also leaves me off kilter, like I wake up on the second or third with a hangover wondering where the year and my time off went.
But February starts right in. This year, it begins mid-week. I held off February as long as I could, setting my alarm for an hour later than usual, but that extra sleep was paid for with a worse commute. Heavy traffic. Still dark. Still cold. Still dead – the trees remind me of the circulatory brachiating they put up on the big screens at work to demonstrate the tortuous path of our catheters.
At least our Christmas tree still looks nice. As of two weeks ago, I stripped it of its ornamentation and removed it from the house. But it now decorates our deck, just outside the kitchen windows. Birds sit in it and it rests for now until its next step on its year long journey going from living tree to becoming a single ornament on next year’s tree.
The other thing February brings is spring semester at the university. It doesn’t feel like spring, but that’s what they call the semester, regardless of the windchill. For six out of the last seven Februarys, I started a class at Hamline University. The only spring semester I missed was in 2014, and that was because Jennifer was due to give birth during finals week. It’s already crappy enough that Owen’s birthday coincides with finals week, I didn’t want to complicate things by being in class at the same time kid number three came aboard and, anyway, I made up for missing that spring semester by taking a summer course. I start a class at Hamline in five days. An email from the school invited me to a reception next Thursday toasting 100 days until graduation. Like usual, I probably won’t attend the celebration, but I’ll silently celebrate the milestone. It’s been a long time in coming.