{"id":19944,"date":"2017-04-23T17:44:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T00:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/40-signs-spring-is-back-in-juneau\/"},"modified":"2017-04-23T17:44:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T00:44:13","slug":"40-signs-spring-is-back-in-juneau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/40-signs-spring-is-back-in-juneau\/","title":{"rendered":"40 signs spring is back in Juneau"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mud Season, Shoulder Season, No-Good-Movies-Until-Memorial-Day Season. Call it what you will, spring has returned to Juneau, a magical time of year marked by lengthening daylight, returning wildlife and close-out deals on Cadbury Crème Eggs. But the capital city abounds in more subtle seasonal phenomena (e.g. the preponderance of pale exposed leg-flesh).<\/span><\/p>\n

Spring is back in Juneau when:<\/p>\n

1. Your kids are outside spraying each other with the hose.<\/p>\n

2. You finally take down your Christmas lights.<\/p>\n

3. Your neighbors, on the other hand, are breaking out the Fourth of July decorations.<\/p>\n

4. Skunk cabbage, speed traps and dog turds sprout up all over town.<\/p>\n

5. An inexplicable desire arises to start running again, although not enough to make you do much more than create a new playlist.<\/p>\n

6. Everyone’s walking around in Folk Fest hoodies.<\/p>\n

7. Speaking of which, you’re still nursing a wicked string-band hangover. Best cure: Slayer — a little “Reign in Blood” should straighten you right out.<\/p>\n

8. You question all that gravel on your driveway during the winter now that you’re tasked with raking it from your lawn.<\/p>\n

9. You find yourself sunbathing in nothing but a sports bra and athletic skort, in some cases directly on snow. What? I can sunbathe in a sports bra and athletic skort if I want. Why else did I move to Alaska? Certainly not for the kosher deli, I’ll tell you that.<\/p>\n

10. You wake up every morning to the sound of somebody pressure-washing something that blatantly doesn’t pressure-washing at 5:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

11. While we’re on the subject, you wonder what the deal is with all the leaf blowers around here; last time you checked, the vast majority of local trees aren’t deciduous.<\/p>\n

12. Your garage looks like something from that TV show “Hoarders.”<\/p>\n

13. You put up your blackout curtains, aka tin foil and duct tape.<\/p>\n

14. You’re happy when it rains so you can finally clean your house.<\/p>\n

15. You’ve grown so blasé about viewing Northern Lights, you won’t get out of bed unless “they’re actually doing something.”<\/p>\n

16. You discover why it was a bad idea to leave your bike outside uncovered since last September.<\/p>\n

17. People are burning stuff.<\/p>\n

18. You’re burning stuff.<\/p>\n

19. Your kids resume peeing off — and, in some cases, on — the deck.<\/p>\n

20. You also resume peeing off — and, in some cases, on — the deck.<\/p>\n

21. Now that first-chair at Eaglecrest ceases to be a consideration, you can reintroduce crepes to the weekend breakfast rotation. And Bloody Marys.<\/p>\n

22. You step in bear scat taking out the garbage.<\/p>\n

23. You’ve exhausted every excuse for not dealing with that pile of old tires and roofing shingles in your yard. Better throw a giant electric blue tarp over it. After all, you don’t want it to be an eyesore.<\/p>\n

24. Once again the question rears its ugly head as to whether you’ll be growing anything more than just weeds in your garden this summer.<\/p>\n

25. (If you answered, “yes” to the above). You find yourself walking out of a supermarket having purchased — in addition to the week’s groceries — multiple varieties of manure.<\/p>\n

26. You promise your daughter you’ll build that playhouse you promised to build her last April … right after you build the woodshed you promised yourself you’d build the April before that.<\/p>\n

27. You feel a primal urge to swing a war club—a softball bat will have to suffice.<\/p>\n

28. You’ve rented (or are planning to rent in the very near future) a piece of gas-powered machinery.<\/p>\n

29. You’re installing a new mailbox. Again.<\/p>\n

30. It’s time to decide whether to trim the winter beard or go full-on “Abbey Road”-era John Lennon with that bad-boy.<\/p>\n

31. Even if it’s sleeting, you’re wearing flip-flops, goshdarnit!<\/p>\n

32. Instead of feigning interest as someone you don’t know but wind up standing next to at a bonfire drones on and on and on about backcountry skiing, you now feign interest as that same person holds forth on fly fishing.<\/p>\n

33. You take the ice skates out of your trunk and hang them up for the season — lake’s looking a little soft for spring skating.<\/p>\n

34. While you’re at it, check under the seats for old forgotten thermoses of hot cocoa. Discover them this summer and you’ll never drink Swiss Miss — or eat cottage cheese — ever again.<\/p>\n

35. You start oiling your guns for fishing season. After all, that halibut’s not going to shoot itself in the face with a .44.<\/p>\n

36. Deviled eggs reappear at potlucks.<\/p>\n

37. It’s your kid’s first Little League practice, and the weather forecast calls for snow.<\/p>\n

38. You suddenly feel like maybe you should mow your lawn. Don’t worry; the feeling will pass.<\/p>\n

39. The tanzanite shops stir back to life.<\/p>\n

40. Your kids now go to bed an hour and a half later and wake up an hour and a half earlier, thereby effectively limiting you and your spouse’s child-free alone time to brushing your teeth and passing out while power-streaming David Attenborough nature documentaries. Most effective birth control, ever.<\/p>\n

\n

• Geoff Kirsch is an award-winning Juneau-based writer and humorist. “Slack Tide” appears every second and fourth Sunday.<\/b><\/p>\n

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Mud Season, Shoulder Season, No-Good-Movies-Until-Memorial-Day Season. Call it what you will, spring has returned to Juneau, a magical time of year marked by lengthening daylight, returning wildlife and close-out deals on Cadbury Crème Eggs. But the capital city abounds in more subtle seasonal phenomena (e.g. the preponderance of pale exposed leg-flesh). Spring is back in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19944"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}