Change Jar

I keep a change jar with dimes, quarters, and nickels. I don't put in loonies and twonies because they're worth enough that I feel like using them on a regular basis. There are $1 bills in the States, so clearly they are considered in some nations to be worth enough to warrant a bill. Loonies and twonies are worth enough, in fact, to justify the controversial change purse built into some mens wallets.

Last year I took my jar to a CoinStar (coin-bill conversion machine) and had about $80. I remember writing about that because I compared it to how much I made from keeping my savings account (far more from the change jar). This year, all my friends would talk about how I had the most massive amount of change and it made me optimistic that I would trump my previous year's amount. Well, my optimism was well-founded because I had $160! Double last year's amount! Why did I have so much change this year?

I just got accepted back for Summer Program Leader! That means I'm going to start a garden in Kitchener! It's probably late in the season to start one but hey, there was snow on the ground this morning!

Terrible! I had to put on my winter coat today!

Earlier in the year when I knew school would end in little more than a month, but everything kept going as usual and I couldn't really make myself believe it in my heart, I looked around at the world carpeted in snow and ice. The winter felt unending, and I couldn't connect it to the warmth and greenery of summer that I connected to the end of school the year previous. I felt frozen in time. I remember walking out one day and breathing in a warm spring breeze. I looked around at the snow and ice that showed no signs of melting, but there was a disconnect between the look of the earth and the smell of the air, and at that moment I really believed in my heart the oncoming of a change in lifestyle.

Anyway, the frost came back for one last go. It didn't bring back my frozen state of mind, though.

Have I spoke on this thing about how I don't like spring? Everybody goes on about how it's the renewal of life and how good it feels for the frost to end and for everyone to be loading up on vitamin D again. But to me, I see that blanket of snow ripple away and what it reveals is the garbage and rotted leavings of the previous year. Summer is the time when life is bustling and at it's prime, then Autumn comes and everything bursts into colour and prepares for winter and, before Autumn can really give that feeling of death, winter sets in, covers it all up, and the world rests. Then Spring comes and reveals what Winter covered up, and because it's all a little worse for wear from sitting beneath the snow that long, everything just looks a little worse than you remembered.

I love greenery and foliage, but there really is that awkward time in Spring that I just grit my teeth and endure as a necessary stage in something that will eventually be beautiful.