Freelance Writer
You can tell it’s March at our house. There’s mud in the yard, and we’re constantly mopping up dirty footprints in the kitchen as we have as yet been unsuccessful in teaching the dog and cats to wipe their feet before entering.
This is the time of year when the dinner table discussion at our house is apt to center around whether it is best to have a big dog which leaves a few large muddy paw prints in its wake, or a small dog which leaves many but smaller pawprints.
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We often have esoteric discussions about this, not only in March.
Another sign of March is the pile of house decorating and remodelling magazines sitting pristine and hopeful on the coffee table.
The magazines are pristine as they have not yet been opened. I am hopeful.
Every March, the urge comes on to clean the house from top to bottom and, at the very least, to wallpaper and paint something.
The quarter round in the porch would be nice too, but I’ve almost given up on that.
I’m convinced the urge is primal, something handed down through the generations from some long forgotten cave-dwelling ancestor who, with the first whiff of spring in the air, felt moved to sweep out the accumulated bones from winter and rearrange the rocks and twigs in the cave.
Unfortunately, the housecleaning and redecorating, if such there is destined to be, will have to wait till April.
Anyone who thinks there is nothing to do in a small town should be around here in March.
There are annual meetings, information meetings, farm meetings, curling bonspiels, hockey tournaments and playoffs. The kids at the high school are getting ready for the regional drama festival and have to be transported and chaperoned.
The skating club is having its carnival and, last week in a final fund-raising gasp, held a Tupperware party which was not to be missed, the owning of Tupperware being a rite of passage for every North American woman.
With the first of April, this frantic round of activity will cease and the rink parking lot will be empty as the count-down to farming begins.
There will be time for the ritual cleaning of the cave, or facsimile thereof, and a close read of the decorating magazines before adding them to last year’s pile in the cupboard.
There is always hope for the quarter round, but getting the machinery ready will have to come first.
