In spring, an old woman’s fancy doesn’t turn to thoughts of love (I’ve been in love with the same person for 46 years); it just rattles around loosely in her discombobulated brain. Something about the sun and the flies does that to me. 

Because my rule is I can’t do anything fun when I’m supposed to be doing my essay, I have instead put away some winter things into the attic, washed the kitchen floor, watched some vultures outside and hoped they found the dead thing that Mark threw into the woods yesterday, took a picture of the clouds, read a couple of newspapers. Nothing fun, I swear. 

Well, I did do my morning New York Times puzzles, but that’s a pre-start-of-the-day thing. More and more games, which have led people in very serious publications to scold the Times for luring people in with them—even suggesting that the daily quizzes are becoming addictive. Hey, if that’s what it takes to get people to accidentally be exposed to reported information instead of random spewings that someone spit out on the internet, I’m all for it. 

Extra credit: Play Connections with the words in the previous paragraph, keeping in mind that I didn’t follow the Times’ quizmaster’s rules of construction. (See sidebar at right.)

[Editor’s note: Want to know what Leah’s talking about? See the Wikipedia entry for The New York Times Connections.]

I finally cut down the two sad dead sticks that had been some white pine saplings, which didn’t like our front yard any more than do the miniature rose bushes my husband gives me every Valentine’s Day. They all regularly die when I transplant them to the garden patch after the weather is warm enough. The live Christmas tree we planted, though, is doing great this year. 

The trees along the edge of the road from our house to Callicoon look as if they have been attacked by demented yetis with machetes.

Wayne County, PA has no acting dairy princess this year. Who will “advocate for and promote the dairy industry through attending parades, visiting markets and schools, and participate in other community outreach opportunities”?

 Wayne County’s penultimate dairy princess is now attending the second of my three colleges and two graduate schools, at which I learned the least, but did meet my previously mentioned love of 46 years, my husband, so I count it as a very important place. A bit after my time there, the college’s president tried to make it known more for academics than its parties, only to resign when police investigating obscene calls to child care providers discovered the calls were placed from his campus office phone. 

Ah, those silly old-fashioned days, when unsolicited assaultive behavior made you lose your job and your respectability, instead of being elected leader of the country.

Speaking of unwanted calls, both Kimberly Guilfoyle and KellyAnne Conway have reached out to me, personally, to tell me they have read my answers to a poll and were very impressed. I am just the kind of American they are looking for! 

Since I generally answer those polls along the lines of “I hate you and everything you and yours stand for and hope you die from a newly fatal strain of hemorrhoids,” I fear for our country, given that people with such poor reading comprehension skills (never read the comments) are in positions to influence our elected leaders. 

I lied. I didn’t wash the kitchen floor. 

Leah Casner lives in Equinunk, PA, after rearing her family in New York City. She occasionally had guest articles in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and other papers. She wastes a lot of time playing newspaper puzzles.