The backyard drama continues. It seems that what we assumed to have been a life and death struggle playing itself out in our two foot corner of dirt has turned out to have been a struggle of a different sort. No dead bunnies in the backyard but bunnies, bunnies and more bunnies. Picture the opening credits of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. Every morning reveals evidence of the previous night’s revels. The Sprite thinks they might be doing a rain dance. I just wish they would keep the music down.

50 degrees in Buffalo is a beautiful thing, especially when it occurs on February 20th. People roll down the car windows and blast the music, kids put on shorts and bring out the bicycles, glacier-like, the snow retreats and reveals hidden treasures; if only the washing machine would yield up its cache of socks in a similar manner. I understand the lone mittens, woolen hats festooned with tire tracks, here and there a sneaker. The one that has me wondering is the single man’s black patent leather pump I passed. I can’t help but think that it must have been one heck of a New Year’s Eve party to walk home in sub zero in your socks.

I have been stuck in the doldrums with a bad case of knitters block [think of a knotted, tangled ball of yarn in a color that doesn’t warrant the effort to unravel and you get the picture]. While I usually have two projects at all times, I currently have only one and I haven’t looked at it in weeks. I need inspiration! Although I still have not figured out how to do a blog roll [I know, I know] the fact that even these fabulous sites have been unable to motivate me says it all.

Every Monday morning I review my case list. It is one of the most soothing parts of my professional routine. I review my open cases/to do items, I enjoy reviewing what is open, moving the parts from one category to another as my cases develop. It is, I guess, a way of gauging progress, something I enjoy. Someone once said that the secret to making a good speech is to talk about the past, the present and the future. I guess I apply that to my entire life. I always find that looking back and then looking at the present helps me to look--and move-forward.

I spent Saturday morning helping out at what I view as our family’s home parish. My parents and grandparents were married there, my mother, aunts and uncles were baptized and made their First Communions there, my sisters and I were baptized there too. Having recently been threatened with closure, a community has come forward to try to keep it alive. People have asked me and I have asked myself why I [ a struggling FLYlady devotee] am doing this. It is not that I am so religious, although I do consider myself to be a spiritual person. I guess it has more to do with historic preservation, a desire to help a struggling neighborhood and an unwillingness to give up on traditions that, I believe, still have vitality and a place in my world. That plus my sister, mother and Aunt are doing it and it gives me a chance to help them help other people. I never knew how big a complex it really was; the convent housed 40 nuns and sisters, the rectory 40 priests and brothers. The school has since been demolished but the kindergarten building remains. The project has brought together a group of people on Saturday mornings who have been working with the new order of priests to …well, impose some order on the long underused buildings. I am impressed with the cheerfulness of the group, the sense of a common purpose and the willingness to help. After spending the morning cleaning the long-empty convent, we were treated to lunch in the kindergarten building. I had not stepped foot in that building in 41 years and yet it looked just as I remembered it. It was very pleasant to think about what it was [a kindergarten and indoor playground] what it is [a meeting place for senior citizens and neighborhood groups] and what it can yet become. Something to ponder over home made soup with kluski and chrusciki.