While many of you are struggling under the weight of fresh snow and slush, I am anxiously awaiting the completion of repairs on my lawnmower. The grass is above my ankles at this point and he tells me it will be another week. My daffodils have bloomed and an iris near the front porch is swelling, probably to open this weekend.

I have several indoor projects to keep me busy if we have any rain over our long weekend (Spring Break for the academic community, but only a couple of extra days for university staff, not the entire week the students and faculty get). I have a new steam cleaner, probably mentioned weeks ago, that I still haven't tested. And as it happens, my ex has a perfect test for it at his house. Apparently Brazilian beer six packs are made of flimsy paperboard and when carrying two across the living room carpet both boxes broke and there are three dark spots where bottles broke and soaked in. He has continued to be a good friend and supportive in all of the activities of the kids and myself the least I can do is take this over and let him see if it will work to clean up the spots on the new carpet. What you can't pay back with dollars you can pay back with access to useful services and devices. :-/ If I had a house full of carpet this smaller device would be a slow way to clean carpets, but I have two areas with carpet, the rest is tile, so this will take care of it. Renting those clunky cleaners from the grocery store is a pain in the backside and you never know what the last renter ran through it.

I'm switching allergy meds this week after a consult with my GP. The daily tablet apparently doesn't turn off the sensitivity of the nasal mast cells so I'm still sneezing. But using a spray will make them less sensitive, and if I need more than the spray then I can boost it with the tablet. The entire office has been sick and sneezing so this seems to be a particularly powerful allergy season. The result of all of this switching stuff out is that I have a lot of bottles of stuff (I shop at Sam's Club where everything comes in bulk packaging) so I need to rearrange one of the kitchen cupboards to organize all of the extra in a way that I can find them when I need them.

There is a deeply discounted grocery store in town that buys from stores that have too much product, that has quantities near the sell-by-date, etc. They get a lot of excellent high-dollar items that are marked down and shoppers understand that either it keeps well past the shelf date or you're going to use it quickly. Yesterday I loaded up on the good yoghurt, organic milk, cheeses, etc. so I need to reorganize my fridge. If I get a $5 tub of yoghurt for .99, and it spoils because I lost track of it behind other stuff, it wasn't a bargain.

How are you doing, Dorothy?