My husband loves islands, preferably warm ones. He could happily walk out the door of our house and spend the rest of his days on a tropical island. I will not be with him.

I only visit islands for short periods of time. Five days would be really pushing it. I absolutely do not have island mentality.

Islands have one major, uncorrectable flaw. All the roads go in circles. In my view of the world, only Indie cars, racehorses and model trains should go in small circles. Since I am none of these, I cannot possibly live on an island.

Consider the road in front of my house. What a beautiful thought that this road leads to another and another and another until suddenly you’re cruising past the Anchorage city limits sign. Having unlimited options is my idea of freedom.

My husband need not worry. He probably won’t be getting any phone calls from Guatemala or Nova Scotia. But many people must share my yearning for endless, open roads. After all, the hit song Route 66 doesn’t seem to want to die.

I know where the best troll in America lives. At the risk of alienating my home state’s Department of Tourism, the place is not Wisconsin.

We do, however, have a fine troll population here in Wisconsin. Our trolls reside in Mount Horeb, a quaint town a short distance from Madison. Their main street is appropriately named “The Trollway”. Whimsical, charming and kitschy would all characterize Wisconsin trolls. They are good Midwesterners and, like us, are non-threatening. Unlike us, they are wooden. My personal favorite is the troll taking pictures with his camera. Only curmudgeons can resist posing for pictures in front of him. The ice cream eating troll isn’t bad either.

The best troll in the USA is 1,983 miles from Wisconsin in Seattle, Washington. He resides, alone, under the Fremont Bridge. This troll is definitely not a Midwesterner; he has a big attitude sort of like that other Seattle area resident, Bill Gates. Parents beware; if trolls were rated, the Fremont troll would get an “R” for excessive violence. See Seattle’s troll at RoadsideAmerica.com and note that his diet consists of VWs!

Thank goodness people have an infinite capacity for self deception. Every year I’m hopeful that a season called “Spring” will come.

You have heard the phrase, the promise of spring. I am starting to have a sinking feeling that we northerners should take this phrase more literally. After all, no one is saying that this particular promise will be kept. All frogs don’t turn into princes. For that matter, most tadpoles don’t turn into frogs.

And then there’s the groundhog. I think we should let the guy sleep in. His predictions have the accuracy of a Ouija board.

Here are the cold, hard facts. It is March. The air is freezing; the wind is cutting. The ground is hard as in frozen solid. Ice balls are falling from the leaden sky. The operative adjective is bleak not springlike.

But there is hope! April is coming. I will follow the advice of the poet, A. E. Housman. “About the woodlands I will go / To see the cherry hung with snow.”

I will completely forget that for most of my springs the snow on the cherries was the real thing.

(The complete A. E. Housman poem is here.)

One week last November when I was feeling particularly unloved by the world at large, I suggested the obvious cure to my husband. “Let’s get a kitten.” Face it, pet lovers, we have our animals for the unconditional love they give us.

The following Sunday we visited our animal shelter’s mobile pet adoption site and gravitated to the scrawniest bit of grey fluff they had. He was six months old, the runt of his litter and a mere four pounds. Obviously, this tiny guy needed lots of T.L.C. We took him home.

Unwilling to burden such a small creature with a long name, we christened him “Pi”.

Our plan was to introduce Pi to our five resident cats slowly. So we put him alone in our screened “cat safe” room. This lasted exactly two minutes when he commenced yowling at the top of his little kitty lungs. We opened the door, and Pi instantly became a member of the Tooley cat clan.

A few days later our 26 pound cat, Gato, was eating his cat kibble. I might note that every attempt to restrict Gato’s food intake has gone down in flames. Pi marched up to him, quickly stuck his paw in Gato’s dish and pulled the dish to himself. That was the end of Gato’s lunch and the start of Gato’s diet!

Pi has gained one pound each month he has lived with us. He is our new alpha cat. Unconditional love is not his thing. We love him dearly, but we probably should be thinking about getting a dog.