Is it Spring Yet?

Plum blossoms are always a sign of spring. They are the first blossoms to appear despite their delicacy and vulnerability to wind and rain. Our temperatures have dropped but the sun is still appearing in a cloudless sky every morning and I thought the dainty flowers were especially pretty in the early morning light.

This is the tree Dana was climbing just a couple of weeks ago. The water branches she pruned off the tree proved to be just the thing to finish off the front porch decor. You can see what you think in extras if you like. 

I stopped by the vet's office today to pick up Ozzie's doggy pain pills. It's not too hard for him to overdo things these days and become very stiff. The waiting room was heaving with dogs and their people...there is a separate waiting room for cats... I was not happy about  having to to pay considerably more than we pay for our own human Advil. We will be carefully gauging just how badly Ozzie needs a pain pill that costs $2.50!

I was pleased to be able to exchange a few words with Steve, our vet who was a friend of Dana's in college. His family's house burned down in October and I told him we'd heard rumors that he might be living in Skyhawk, the development near to us where Dana lives. He said they had looked at houses there, but had ultimately decided to rebuild and were renting a place across town in the meantime. Clearly he was busy and probably extremely tired of talking about it, saying just that it was a 'process' but they would get through it. It seems to me that the only positive thing about losing everything would be that you could design exactly the house you want. Unfortunately, having seen this process play out in the Berkeley/Oakland hills, I know that the insurance/city/county/federal regulations have pretty much taken away whatever satisfaction there might have been and reduced it to a 'process'.... 

There has been no sign of the dryer repair guy. He was supposed to come today but he didn't. We're lucky that the sun is drying our clothes more quickly than the dryer does. I'm not sure it ever worked very well. I think the scheduler from the shop is afraid to call me.