If we could push "Save"

Annie visited this Benedictine Abbey yesterday in her Irish travels. Again, her blog site can be found at www.rainiergirl.blogspot.com.

From this photo, it looks like the nuns have been able to push "save" a time or two to preserve the wonderful beauty of their surroundings.

I was thinking this morning about how much more convenient and less frustrating life could be if we could operate like our computers do.

When I type my blog each day, the blogger mechanism regularly and automatically saves what I've written. So, I can just mosey on with my thoughts and know they'll be there when I want to go back and look them over and do some editing before publishing.

Occasionally, however, I'm not aware that weather conditions affect my satellite dish, shutting down my connection to the outside world which leads to the blogger god somewhere who performs that task of automatic saving.

Various factors, like a computer freeze-up when someone calls me away from the screen in the middle of my blogging, then cause me to lose everything I've written.

Knowing that some folks are sitting at their computers with their cups of coffee, waiting to read the morning's posting, I get agitated when such glitches appear.

How am I going to quickly replicate what I just took half an hour typing, and how will I ever say it quite like I did when my mind was going full bore ahead?

It's difficult to describe the feeling---but just imagine mowing your lawn only to have a wind storm come up out of nowhere and 14 million cottonwood leaves and sprigs coming with it to litter your just-finished manicure. That's about how it feels to lose a posting.

Most of the time, however, we're fortunate in that we can save our work as we go along. So far, this morning, the snow storm has not shut off my Internet, and what I've written is staying put.

Now let's talk about the snow storm. And, let's talk about the poor saps who have to stay here and mind the fort during March when all their other friends are down south somewhere in the desert, driving around Ireland or basking in the sun over in Hawaii.

We get desperate at this time of year to perform any task that might just move spring along a little sooner. In my case, I shovel, or should I say "delete" snow from areas where little patches of green start appearing. I figure the more snow I shovel the bigger the patch and the more satisfaction I'll enjoy, knowing that it looks a little more like spring.

I guess you'd call it one big editing project to make the outdoor scene look the way I want it.

Yesterday, I shoveled a path to the dog kennel and even deleted some snow from part of the enclosure. That allowed me to get in there and take down the Christmas lights which I have not been able to remove for nearly three months. So far, the Clark Fork gestapo has not come my way to cite me for keeping my decorations up too long.

So, they're down now, in the kennel, at least. Several strings are still hanging in areas I cannot yet reach, so don't tell those Clark Fork officials.

Still, knowing that some Christmas decorations came down on March 4 gives a a desperate soul a certain amount of hopefulness that spring IS looking closer.

Then, the snow comes back, from the sky, this morning. Which brings to mind the idea of "saving."

Wouldn't it have been nice if, at the end of the day yesterday, after doing all that work to make it look more like spring here at the Lovestead, I could have just pushed a button that said "save," and all my work would have remained exactly the way I left it.

I could have started out today making even more progress over what I accomplished yesterday.

On this new day, I would not have to look at that path that I shoveled so nicely into the kennel yesterday and think of how I could replicate the shoveling job as perfectly as the original effort.

I do not want to have to replicate what I did yesterday in the realm of making this place look more like spring. I want to see progress.

Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. The Christmas lights are no longer hanging in the kennel. So, there's a wee amount of satisfaction to cling to as I endure yet another day of digging deep down into the empty bag that provides me and a lot of other homebound saps the patience to endure the never-ending North Idaho winter.

And, while I'm on it, there's one other thing I want to know. How come Mother Nature got issued a "save" button that she gets to push as many times as she damn well pleases during the winter!

Wouldn't it be nice if just one year we'd reach the most perfect, mild summer day of the year when the flowers are blooming profusely, the bees are buzzing, the birds are singing happily, horses are frolicking in the green fields, dogs are sunning themselves on the lawn and life just seems oh so blissful------and Mother Nature would accidentally push the "save" button.