In like a lion, out like a lamb

This is apparently a well known expression to describe the month of March in the USA. We'd never heard of it before, but the 3 days of snow at the beginning of the month have given way to gorgeous warm weather.

Life here is pretty mellow at the moment (although Nic and I are both working hard). To illustrate, here is a day in the life of Sal, Monday, March... um 23rd I think.

7am - stab finger wildly at mobile phone until awful noise stops. Dog licks face several times, tongue goes up nose. Dogbreath is a marvellous stimulant to get out of bed.

7:45 am - coffee has worked. Breakfast is digesting. Several windproof layers later, I am on my bike.

8:15 - arrive at the office. Kim wanders in pushing her bike about 3 minutes later. She's locked her keys in her house and has some organizing to do to get a spare set.

8:45 - Focus grasshopper! Working working...

10:00 am - Gaby comes in. We talk some work, some "what happened on the weekend". He seems mildly impressed when I say that I broke up a dog fight and shooed a dodgy guy off the property having interrupted him blatantly casing our house. Something a bit obvious about standing on the front doorstep, staring through the window into the computer room, and not ringing the doorbell for 5 minutes. "Can I help you?" I shouted through the front door. "Can I mow your lawn?" he yelled back. "No!" I said. I now sort of wish I'd said: "what are you going to cut it with, your teeth?" since he had no mower to speak of. Anyway, I called the police and they were down in a few minutes, which was good.

1 pm - Stefan comes by so we can organize going to "Tribe-O" in October. Stefan's going to take loads of classes in fire twirling and juggling and that sort of thing, and I'm going to bellydance for 3 days. Don't know if we'll get Nic to come up and hang with the hippies. Apparently there is a posse that Stefan's friend Kate has organized. Fun.

1:30 pm - coffee is good in the afternoon.

4:30 pm - where did the time go? Shoot, I must have been working productively for the past 3 hours, because I have no idea what happened between coffee and now.

5:30pm - still going strong, but must get home to walk Emma.

5:45 - Emma is jumping about 6 feet in the air when I get home, bringing manky old socks to me for me to throw for her. Happily it appears that scungy mower guy has not broken into our house to steal the computer he saw in the window. Yay.

5:50 - WALKIES! We wander past Katherine's place round the corner where Katherine and her tenant Adam are putting in a "micro farm" to sell locally grown veggies to the neighbourhood. The tiller belt has broken, but Adam is upbeat. Everyone cuddles Emma. We wander down Prince Street and see the gorgeous Bradford Pear trees in full blossom, big and white and blossomy. Just gorgeous. Then we walk past the baseball diamond and check out the 6-7 year olds training for little league. So cute! But I'm paranoid about hanging around there ever since someone (Nic's Mum?) told us a story about the police shooing on adults who were watching kids play in parks in NYC in case of pedarests... and I don't want anyone thinking I'm about to turn into a child snatcher. I walk Emma into the woods and let her off the leash so she can bolt around and work out some energy, and then we walk home down Wa Wa Ave, seeing the bizarre sight of the local grumpy dog having been translocated from under a parked car, to standing happily on the garage roof. He looked seriously temped to jump off to bark at Emma, and I didn't think his hips had a hope of taking that, so we rushed on down the street, stopping to talk dogs and cats and vets with a local lady, and finally getting home at 6:30.

7:30 - we've eaten dinner, and I'm blogging... and I have to go get Nic from the airport!

Its about 16 degrees, sunny and not windy.... and beautiful. The lamb is definitely here!