1. Not having to grab a jacket when you leave the house;
2. Visiting with your neighbors in your backyard;
3. Sundresses;
4. Green grass dotted with yellow daffodils;
5. Cooking your dinner outdoors every night;
6. Drinks on a restaurant patio;
7. Flip-flops;
8. Margaritas and lemonade;
9. Standing in line with your spring plants at Home Depot;
10. Buying almost everything you need for the week at your local farmer’s market;
11. Work-outs in the park;
12. Kites;
13. Replacing your flannel sheets with soft cotton;
14. Road trips with the windows down;
15. Fresh-picked strawberries and homemade shortcake;
16. Short sleeves;
17. A hammock and a good book;
18. Love in the air;
19. Leaving the windows open all night long;
20. Trees covered with blooms;
21. Sunshine when you get up and after dinner, too;
22. Showering off the sweat and dirt after a day outside;
23. Spring fever instead of runny noses;
24. Bikini shopping;
25. Easter candy at Target; and
26. Pulling your bike out of storage and tuning it up.

What else?  Come on, what are you dreaming of right now?

That’s right, I used “love” and “January” in the same phrase.  The two words can go together if you take a glass-half-full point of view.  So just about the time you’re bemoaning your flaking winter lips, gray-sky spirit, and unavailable gym treadmill, give thanks for these underrated perks of that armpit of months: 

1. Citrus.
2. Boots that look like slippers and slippers that look like boots.
3. The constant possibility of a snow day.
4. Resolve.
5. The first-round auditions of American Idol.
6. Philosophy bubble bath in “Pure Grace” scent.
7. Hot drinks spiked with magical potions that warm you through and through.
8. Corduroy in fun primary colors.
9. Birds counting on you for sustenance and rewarding you with their presence in your backyard.
10. Flannel sheets and flannel shirts.
11. The Golden Globes and their drunken guests and glamorous fashions.
12. Soup on the stove and cookies in the oven.
13. No weeding or mulching.
14. A clean slate.

I set out for my morning walk with purpose, because I need to soak up some Vitamin D and burn a few calories after last night’s minty cocktails and barbecue meatballs, and besides, I hear walks are supposed to be therapeutic, too. Along the way I encounter sidewalks full of leaves — the crunchy kind you can’t resist plowing through instead of walking around, going out of your way to crunch every leaf flat.

And I can’t help but flash back to when I was eight and had to walk to the café downtown after school to meet my dad so he could give me a ride home. Six whole blocks, bor-ing, and it took for-ev-er. But the crunchy leaves along the way served to ease the boredom, and I made sure to shuffle through and stomp on each and every one. Oh, get that one, too. And that one.

How could I have imagined back then that some thirty years later I’d go for these walks on purpose, and five times as long. And that I’d do it in this far-away place called Nashville, Tennessee, where my favorite girl singer, Sissy-Spacek-playing-Loretta-Lynn, sang at the Grand Ole Opry. And that I wouldn’t be on my way to meet my dad, get a quarter for the Ms. Pacman machine and maybe another for a Hershey bar, bug him to finish his coffee so we could go home already. That instead I’d be wishing I could have a cup of coffee with him, ask him how he’s doing.

Nope, I never could have imagined this.

But one thing hasn’t changed. The impulse to crunch those crunchable leaves. And that one. And that one, too.