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After 4 years of living in this house, I've finally learned how to get the upper windows to swing over so I can clean them. With this knowledge, I then spent 30 minutes cleaning one window. I'm guessing 4 years between window cleanings is probably too long. Actually, it was probably longer than that as the previous owners were house cleaners on the same level as I am, so make that 8 years.

So, to celebrate, I've decided to admire the lone clean window and, as an added bonus to seeing how nice and, well, transparent it is, I've decided that to reallyreally get the full shiny effect, I should not clean it's brethren until after tomorrow morning, when the morning sun has really shone upon the glass.

So, that's one down, 19 to go, meaning another 9+1/2 hours, give or take.

So nice to have settled that.

It's finally spring, here and all the green things are green and all the bulb things are blooming and all the other things are doing what ever else they do.

And for final proof of spring, yesterday, I saw the year's first patient presenting for 'removal of retained tick parts'. Her husband had only been successful with decapitating the embedded tick in her shoulder and his attempts at blunt dissection with bathroom implements did not have the outcome they hoped for. But she's better and I got to excise and suture, so win-win, yes?

Of course that was preceded by the tick that dropped of my mother-in-law while she was reading on Tuesday and followed the tick I found under the computer desk yesterday. For an encore, I encountered one in my hair, getting ready to mine for red gold this afternoon, so I'm feeling a bit less sanguine, but I'll still take the spring.

It's been such a long damn winter this year. Record snowfalls and all that, and while I firmly avow that colds, flu and gastroenteridities are all caused by various viruses, I can't help but notice that Sara's missed more days the past few months of school than she's attended and yesterday was the first time in 2 weeks that I've been what I consider well. Not symptom free, but not ill, if you get my meaning.

So I feel a little symbolic (and actual) house cleaning is in order.

I also got those scary morning glories planted out by the front porch. Hopefully, they will scramble up and drape themselves picturesquely over the railing. Realistically, they will scamper up and strangle the lilies, monarda and butterfly bush and I won't be able to stop it as I'll be prostrate inside on a couch in the air conditioning wilted from the heat and humidity come July. Actually, I'm fine with summer, I'm just bone lazy, but it makes a better tale to say that I'm swooning like an Edith Wharton character.

What else, what else?

Oh! We should now take time to pat Marvelous Charles vigorously on the back. He's gone and landed himself a position as Superintendent of Schools. "Schools" as there are, indeed, two schools in the district, but we are very excited. It's tiny (the whole district has fewer students than his current school) and they have no textbooks. Well, that's not precisely true. Apparently they do have a social studies book written in the early '90s, and lord knows the world hasn't changed in the last 15 years. So we'll be adding Friday night sports events come the fall and he'll attend all sorts of school board meetings and have new tales to tell. That'll be the end of riding to and from work together, but it really is time for him to do this. It's also about 15 minutes closer than his current district and in the more stable state of Wisconsin.

He's also taking his comprehensive exams for his doctoral program tomorrow, so that's one more hurdle he'll have jumped. He's got, we think, 3 more classes to take and then he launches into all the ballyhoo surrounding the proposing, writing and defending of The Dissertation and so, with luck and a few bribes, he should be a newly minted 'doctah' in 2 years, give or take. Then we can mess with callers who ring asking for 'Dr Piffle'.

So, if you happen to have time on your hands Friday between the hours of 8:15 am and, say, 5:00 pm CDT, and you feel like sending a good thought his way as he hunkers in the basement of some cement walled ed. building on the U of W Madison campus, feel free to send them his way.

Me? I'll be taking the day cleaning another window, musing on the nature of spring and wondering if there's a service you can call to come and vacuum your property to remove all those blood-sucking parasites that make living in the country not quite so nice as it would otherwise be.