“Springtime in the Rockies”... for those of us who live there we all know what that phrase means... snow. Quite a bit of snow. Often most of the majority of our yearly snowfall occurs in the Spring. The snow of course is punctuated by very warm, Spring-like weather... but those of us old-timers know it is just a ruse... another snow storm is a comin' round the bend. The seesaw weather patterns are enough to drive even the most stable human being scallywonkers. So I keep my eyes out for simple sanity keepers. Here a couple of my favorites:

Color... what I crave now is color. So what a delight it was to discover in several HFS’s packages of mini sweet peppers in jewel shades of red, orange, and even yellow. Yes, the warmest colors of the spectrum and so appreciated this time of year and so good for the B too... especially secretors. And... they are the perfect size to chop up onto a salad, toss into a breakfast stirfry... but mostly I eat them as is, like I would a plum. Very few seeds and almost no membrane in these little beauties. But the color... the color... you B’s know what I mean.

About a week ago, I was hiking in the cañon on one of those warm teaser days when I was astounded to see several Swallowtail butterflies, the first of the season. Obviously blown in by a stray wind along their migratory route, how wonderful it was to watch them fluttering in the warm sun. I realized how I missed their light, erratic movement patterns during the heaviness of winter. I let these delicate creatures lift my weary heart in a skipping dance to the clouds.

Freshly ground flax seed meal is a must this time of year. When I eat yogurt with fresh fruit and flax seed meal first thing in the mornings, my energy stays stable and my mood bright and cheery throughout the day. Not to mention the benefits for your skin, hair and nails...

And... if all else fails on those snowy Spring days, I look out into my garden. I have a Laughing Buddha statue with a big round belly and a huge grin on his face. No matter what the weather, he is always smiling. And he is especially comical with a mantle of snow about his shoulders and a cap of snow on his head... a nice reminder to not take life too seriously.

I can’t help but join him in his grinning.

I work for an organization that is run by a volunteer board of directors, most of them retired women, or women who have spent their lives as community activists. They are a great group of brassy women who are just a hoot to be around.

These are ladies who LOVE to LUNCH. They have elevated lunch to its own art form, it is the central focus of their day... where to eat lunch and with whom. Every meeting, every activity without question, must be considered around the lunch question... and I am most often their intended target.

They LOVE to take me out to lunch. And it is almost always an establishment laden with avoids at every turn. Now, if there was one meal I could go without eating, it would be lunch. I often wish that I didn’t have to eat at that hour. It is a disruption to my day. But my body DOES need to eat at that hour, and meeting my body’s needs is a priority for me.

Now, I know that this is an act of kindness and generosity on their part and I do appreciate their need to indoctrinate me into the high art of lunching. But I do have difficulty meeting my own food needs within this framework and frankly I have plum run out of ideas on how to cope. They know I am on some sort of crazy diet and I did make the mistake of eating a main dish of chicken once. So now I often hear, “Well, we know you’ll eat chicken, dear” which they serve me at every opportunity. Oy! I won’t make a mistake like that again.

My usual tactic is to try to dodge the lunch hour... which is anywhere from 10:30 to 2:00 by their standards... if we have a meeting in that time frame I know I will have to deal with the Lunch Ladies, too. Sometimes I can prepare myself by eating a large breakfast and having a substantial snack mid morning and just a salad for lunch, and it is quite easy to pick out tomatoes, olives, and other avoids from a salad. But sometimes I am caught unawares by the Lunch Ladies, thinking I have dodged a bullet with an early morning meeting and, Oh no!!! It’s 10:31!! Now they are goiing to take me out for lunch!! And I am not prepared!!! Which means a salad is just not going to cut it.

The worst is when they want to treat me to a “nice” lunch and the “Oh, you MUST try the Chicken Cacciatore, it has the most excellent tomato sauce”, and I find myself struggling with meeting my own needs as best I can and, well, trying to please them. They are a bit older than me, you see, and, remind me alot of my own mother and grandmother. So I feel the need to “eat” in their presence... clean my plate, as it were, as if I was a child and not the grown woman that I am. Funny, huh. Issues with food often run deep.

So, I will keep plugging away at this one, forging ahead to find the clear space at the end. And maybe just grow up a little bit more in the process.