# 4 short, (mostly) unedited post - Park Season

I am always glad on January 2nd, after all the frivolity is done and only Three King's Day yet glimmers on the horizon, that there is something really grand to look forward to here in the lowlands of Arizona. It would be called spring in other states (forget the calendar, for that's what it is if one trusts the weather). To me it is known fondly as park season.

It's that time of year when I find every possible excuse to shuttle my kids to the park. The time of year when I get to whoosh down the slides behind them, climb the monkey bars after my youngest, hop down the jungle gym steps with glee, and steal my kids' scooters or bikes when they're not looking in order to take a rollicking tour on the sidewalk. It's the time of year when all is right with the world, when the child within me is reborn in mild weather.

When others up north and back east are shut in their homes, cursing the lingering but now burdensome snow, feeling cabin fever and making love to their steaming cups of coffee, most Arizonans are taking to the outdoors, offering ourselves up to the sunshine. It accepts us and carresses us and keeps its promise not to roast us until sometime about mid-June. It will then be our turn to lock ourselves indoors, cursing not the snow and cold but a blinding, scorching, piercing, drunk-with-its-own-power, absolutely maniacal star that acts like its the center of our solar system.

But until then we'll be wearing shorts in January, playing golf until May, acting like giddy fools with our kids at the park for months to come and wishing everyone a happy, jolly, very merry park season!