Well, I left the house with a spring in my step, after listening to an assortment of Irish tunes in the wee hours of the morn. But, all the mirth and merriment immediately stopped short once I stepped beyond the screen door where I verified that, nope – Spring had not yet arrived despite that balmy and beautiful day we enjoyed yesterday. Old Man Winter refuses to let this season go from his manly grip, and will probably hold on ‘til the bitter end when we exit Winter and welcome Spring on Friday. The wind was gusting and it was blustery and John McMurray, WJR’s weatherman had mentioned that our Michigan weather mirrored that of Dublin, Ireland today.

I’m still keeping the walks somewhat abbreviated for now because I basically had to start my walking regimen from scratch since more than a month had passed since my last long jaunt. I’m not yet ready to travel to Council Point Park for even one lap, which is 3 ½ miles altogether round trip, and, I doubt the snow and ice have disappeared from there anyway. I will set my sights on three miles by the first day of Spring – hopefully anyway.

As I passed beneath some still-bare and gangly looking trees, I heard a bird or two cheeping as if to call out “Top of the mornin’ to you lass” so perhaps they, too, had a sense of the usually festive mood of this holiday. I still had “The Unicorn Song” coursing through my brain and out my ears, having heard snippets of it as I flipped up and down the dial on my stereo headphones while eating breakfast and trying to get my Irish on. As I walked along, I failed to see a unicorn, nor a single green alligator, so I suppose most of those gators are either relegated to the front of the Lacoste shirts or running rampant on the golf courses in Florida these days. There weren’t any long-necked geese flying overhead either, and, if there were leprechauns toting a pot of gold, they were absent as well.

I was glad I didn’t totally abandon my hat for the season – well, you know me … too many years of riding the bus, and I don’t always give up the gloves nor hat ‘til May Day sometimes. But, the wind kept trying to whisk my hat off my head and I shivered a time or too and felt like doing a jig to warm up. But, in the end I didn’t want to ruin my credibility, with someone thinking perhaps I’d slurped down some Irish coffee instead of Nescafe in my cup. So, no … the Irish whiskey didn’t make me frisky and any wiggling around might have been attributed to that second cup of coffee I shouldn’t have had before departing on my walk.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day one and all.