NOTE: This post was originally written on Monday night, April 30. I was so looking forward to May, to the dawning of my favorite month of the year, four weeks of enveloping warmth and soft sun and gentle rain and celebrations of love.
Last night, I thought I'd greet this morning with birds chirping and curtains fluttering in a sweetly scented breeze.
Um, no.
Little did I know that this post would have been more accurately titled " Mayday," because do you want to know how I greeted the May morn? With Kyle hollering from downstairs that Teddy had inexplicably peed in his crate during the ten extra minutes we laid in bed, and since he's much bigger now, it was what I would charitably call a freaking lake of urine.
So in the spirit of full disclosure, life isn't always as rose-colored as I'd like to pretend.
But he is still incredibly cute.
Guilty..........................
Back in sixth grade, my mom discovered this totally delightful songstress by the name of Loreena McKennitt. We got her CD, The Book of Secrets, and I was in heaven. It was enough mystery and romance and New Age-yness to suit even my boundless enthusiasm for that sort of stuff.
It was also an extremely, ahem, unusual choice of "favorite music" for a middle school girl. Chances were 50-50 around that time whether or not I'd turn out fairly normal and get a responsible job one day, or go become some kind of troubadour in a traveling Renaissance faire.
via
So yes, anyway. Loreena McKennitt. Gosh, I still love her. And I promise there is a point.
.........................
We don't do much to celebrate May Day here in the US, and it's a real shame, because I would love to gallivant around a May pole and braid flowers in my hair (perhaps I should have seriously considered the Renaissance faire route after all).
But it's still big in the UK -- where brilliant students at Oxford drunkenly attend choir madrigals after the night's revelry and then, for reasons known only unto them, jump off the Magdalen Bridge into the 2-feet-deep River Cherwell, risking serious bodily harm ( I did not make that up).
How delightfully bizarre of them!
.........................
Don't we need some more random celebrations and excuses to drink wine and appreciate nature these days? Well, I don't -- I was throwing random "love parties" for my mother around the age of four (no wine involved on my part then) -- but I want everyone else to feel the same freedom. Like I said Sunday, to toast the small moments, to inject a little joie de vivre into everyday life. (I hear the best method of injecting joie de vivre is imbibing few glasses of pink bubbly).
via.........................
So because I love nearly all things British, and all things spring, and all things Loreena McKennitt, I'm going to spread the May Day love to you. Turn the volume down so as not to scare off coworkers, and listen to the magical sounds of her song The Mummer's Dance.
ANOTHER NOTE: That video is a lot weirder than the music. Like, maybe it will give me nightmares.
Perhaps close your eyes and enjoy it?
Now get out there and start Mumming, yinz.
Happy May Day!