Happy Spring!

I started the day with the dogs, walking them in the near-dark. The ground in the field is still a little soft from the recent rains, which is a good, if muddy, thing.

Meet Jane, my new ride. She's pleasant, low miles, everything works (so far), but she's no Cadillac. I still don't feel quite at home with her. Maybe we'll bond tomorrow--I'm going down to the City and nothing like traffic to bring people together. Oh wait, she's not a person. M thinks it will be helpful to get her out on the highway for a little extended engine revving or something. Unfortunately, she's still a little smelly from the stuff they use to make her interior look new-ish, but it's getting better. And I'm just glad not to be stressed out about whether or not I'll break down somewhere, in the dark or rain. I'm also very grateful to M who made the whole purchase very easy on me. We sneakily looked at cars on our auto row late one evening after the stores had closed, so didn't have to deal witht the eager sales staff. Jane luckily was on the lot where he used to work and where he still had friends, so he took care of the wheeling and dealing, so all I had to do was go down and sign the papers. Thank goodness!

I'm going to SF tomorrow on an interesting errand, a new experience for me: I'm a mentor! Someone I met at SXSW last year has an organization, NewMe Accelerator, that incubates startup companies founded by minorities and women, and he asked me to join as a mentor. Frankly, I was surprised--I don't have any business experience--but hey, I love to give advice! And I can certainly advise about marketing and PR once they get their business up and running, so there it is.

It's been a pleasant couple of weeks, with a little excitement here and there.

The house hunting is moving along: we have to paint our home before putting it on the market, which our agent is very eager to do. We got a crazy-low bid from a colleague of our handyman neighbor, so that's a relief, especially after the auto outlay. The whole home purchase idea is still a little dreamy to me. I've wanted more space since we moved in a dozen years ago, but well, we've been here a dozen years and inertia has set in to a certain extent. We've accumulated so much crap that the idea of moving it makes me shut down a bit. Gotta work on my brain compartmentalization techniques I guess. One thing at time. We haven't even put our house on the market yet for FSM's sake, much less found a house we want to live in for probably the rest of my life. One mental decision helped a little--I had been working myself up a bit thinking that this would be the last home purchase ever. Ever! And you know what? It really doesn't have to be. I want it to be a place where I'll be happy if I don't ever move again, but why put all that pressure on myself? Que sera, sera. Only the Magic 8Ball knows the future. And the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Roxy had been acting poorly, not wanting to jump out of the truck, limping and yiping for no apparently reason, so we took her to the vet. It seems that she may be starting to feel arthritis! The vet recommended we give her anti-inflammatory meds and rest her since she may be having back pain. After two days of the meds she started having odd, seemingly uncontrollable spasms in her back leg, so we stopped. But, we did rest her a bit and she appears to be feeling better. She's still not flinging herself about with intensity that she used to when a walk or bowl of food is imminent, but frankly that's a bit of a relief.

I took a few days off of work last week and we went to Manchester for a long weekend. It was very nice, as usual. I didn't work on any of the knitting projects I brought, but I slept a fair amount, read, relaxed, walked on the beach. It rained buckets and hailed too, which was quite exciting. I saw the CityArt gallery space--very nice.

Don, Mom, Roxy, a photo by suzipaw on Flickr.

TMI alert: I'm scheduled for a colonoscopy in a few weeks. My first one, cuz I'm 50, and the first time I'll ever have tried twilight anesthesia. Truly, I'm not looking forward to it, though the "cleansing" process I have to go through the night before appeals to me in an odd way. Hey, I'm a Virgo--scrubbing the ol' intestinal tract seems like A Good Thing.