May 1

This is a very dangerous time of year.
I just flipped the calender and met Azari. I have an SPCA calender, I love it, and every month I get to meet one or two or three celebrities.
This month it is Azari. Black dog with white whiskers, obviously older, looks a little sad but I'm gonna interpret the look as contentment. I cannot stomach the idea of sad animals.
It's May 1 and you have to be exquisitely careful.
You notice how quickly April went by? Strange month. Hot,cold, comfortable, rain, wind, sun; it threw everything it could at us to keep us off balance.
May is when you can officially start living. May, June, July, August, September - these are the only worthwhile months in New England. And July and August are the only genuine months. The rest are poseurs. Unpredictable, unreliable.
It gets warmer, you can live outside, barbecue, kayak, get drunk in the sun on your freshly mowed lawn, throw some shoes, walk, drive with the windows down (top down if you are really cool), go out for one pound chilly bacon cheese dogs and dig the sauce running down your chin.
Stand in your driveway in a T-shirt, lean back and throw your face at the sun and revel in the warmth. The ease. The naturalness of it all.
But it is dangerous because it goes by so quickly and you are so damn busy.
Work, obligations, deadlines and commitments. None of that changes to accommodate the good weather.
So you have to focus hard. I give you permission to indulge in that whole "living in the moment" thing. "Being here now."
Because if you don't, you will be standing thigh deep in snow, scraping ice off your windshield, leaving one hour earlier for work to allow for conditions and wondering what the hell you did this summer.
This time of year lulls you to complacency. It feels so right that you think this is how life is. Your body and your mind get fooled.
So you gotta dig down deep. Throw the covers off the bed every morning, run out into the yard and smile at the sun. Look at the calender every day and don't lose track of where you are.
Of course it is raining today. Quite steadily. It's 41 degrees (feels like 39). Not a good start to the living time of year, but I warned you about May, June and September.
I have an intimate relationship with the month of May. My first son was born on May 3, 1980. It was a glorious day. Temperature reached 78 degrees that day. I came bounding down the hospital steps shortly after 6:00 a.m.to blinding sunshine.
That is how May is supposed to make you feel.
Anyway, I have Azari to keep me company through this month. He knows how to dig weather. It comes naturally to him. When it is warm, he frolics and inspects and walks and sniffs and looks into.
On a day like this, he sleeps.
Very cool.