It’s not very spring-like in Ottawa. In fact, I believe it is snowing right now. Every morning Little Miss Sunshine, who has to leave the house first every day, asks our Google Home for the weather, and every day the Google Home says cheerily, “It’s -5 right now, with a windchill effect of -11, cloudy today with a high of 2 degrees and chance of snow showers.”

Then she sighs heavily and trudges to the door to put on her boots, and toque, and mitts, and winter coat, although she refuses snow pants now on principle. I feel her pain.

But! Despite the fact that spring is dragging her feet, I am still feeling pretty chipper. There is fresh light in the mornings and the snow is sloooooowly melting and there are things to be happy about, like:

Les Miserables.

Okay, it IS one of the saddest musicals/movies of all time. But I watched it last week with my older daughter, Gal Smiley, and now she is obsessed, and I’m so, so happy. I saw it when I was on a Grade 9 field trip to New York City and it was TRANSFORMATIVE. I know every word to the soundtrack and now she and I go around the house all the time, several times a day, belting out all the parts to “One Day More” (her: Marius, Enjolras, Javert; me: Jean ValJean, Cosette, Eponine, while we both take on the Thenardiers). It is awesome.

She’s getting into stage musicals in general, having recently been through phases when she listened to the Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack and then the Rent soundtrack on repeat. I’m thrilled. I was super into musicals and theatre as a kid – still am.

Side story – I was thinking this morning about how I begged my mother to take me to see Shakespeare as a child and she eventually caved and took me to The Tempest at the Stratford Festival when I was 11 years old, the same as as Little Miss Sunshine right now. I even READ IT before we went so I would understand everything and we sat in the front row and I was ENTHRALLED. Every year after that my awesome mom took me to at least two plays or musicals there, sometimes three or four, and thinking about this over breakfast made me realize I was NOT a normal child. I am trying to imagine going on a field trip with Little Miss Sunshine’s class, and having some kid in her class tell me how much they enjoyed their recent outing to see The Tempest and that they were hoping to catch something by Gilbert and Sullivan or Moliere next year, and basically falling over from shock, and also thinking that kid was WEIRD.

This explains a LOT about my school days.

Anyway, I am just happy that I have at least one kid who is into stage and screen and musicals and we can geek out about it together.

Also good this spring: the end is in sight for Girl Guiding! My last meeting as a leader is May 29 – I have signed the papers and told the people. I will really, really miss all the crafting. This past week I stayed up late every night to make 24 custom Harry Potter wands, each a different size and shape and pattern with a different semi-precious stone embedded in the handle, and I love them all. And I also made a set of mini Harry Potter bookmark-scarves out of felt, and made little scrolls with a Harry Potter potions assignment on it, and now I am thinking of opening up an Etsy business to fill the void.

Also I will miss the paperwork. I’m serious about this – I just love paperwork and record keeping. I love updating the files I have on each girl that track what badges they have and I love entering the attendance and I love updating the budget and making inventories of supplies. I TOLD you I was weird.

But I will not miss the rest of it – the hours spent planning and the way my mind cannot let go of a cool idea once I have it, and how I must do EVERYTHING because I can’t not be a perfectionist, and how I stress out before every meeting and have to have a big glass of wine after each one, and how some girls are great but some girls are annoying and I have to be nice to everyone all the time.

So farewell to guides and guiding, it was a lovely experience but I’m ready to be done.

As they say in Les Miz: One Month More. Actually, Two Months More, but I think I can make it work in the song. We will nip it in the bud! My place is here, I stand with you! Les Miz applies to SO MUCH of your daily life, it seems.

Happy spring!