Spring has sprung for another year, a time, as one of my work colleagues says, "when the iron in your blood turns to lead in your pants". It started with a couple of gloriously sunny days, to be followed by rain today, with freezing rain during the week. We have caught the spirit & have started spring cleaning - cleaning the house, followed by clearing out the clothes that we no longer wear.

Not sure where I have mentioned this before, probably in the eulogy to Doris, that we are all given 6 "exit points" for this lifetime. They may be anywhere from microseconds to decades apart, which doesn't really matter anyway in spiritual terms, because on the other side, things move at light speed & time means nothing. Anyway, the spirit decides which one it is going to take. Often if you look back, you can see them in hindsight. I've nearly drowned twice, so those two are pretty obvious, & surviving a volcanic eruption would have to be in there too.

Last week, Julie added one to her count when she had to stop suddenly in heavy traffic & fell off her bike right in front of a huge truck. Fortunately, the traffic itself was almost stopped anyway. A Police Officer appeared from nowhere & helped her get the bike up & into the middle of the roundabout & fix the mirrors. Then I got a plaintive little voice on the phone, just after I had sat down at work, to come & rescue her, because she was too flustered to get back on & cross the 2 lanes of road to get back on her way to work. She was still shaking when I got there!

Then on Monday, I added one more to my count, when I moved off slowly from the lights in the car (I was day dreaming - it was 7:30 in the morning & I was just nicking down to the Post Office to collect a parcel) & a car side-swiped another one & careened across the road right in front of me, across 3 whole traffic lanes & finishing on the footpath, closely followed by a large collection of debris! If I had been just a second or two earlier, it would have hit me right in the drivers side door! I looked over to the car that had been hit it looked like the lady was having a fit - I figured out later that she was coughing, as her seat back had been laid back in the impact & she was lying on her back. So I went over & did the First Aid thing, holding her upright as she coughed up blood. Fortunately she had regained consciousness & was squeezing my hand by the time the Ambos arrived.

Then when I went to the Blood Bank for my regular plasma donation, the nurse took my blood pressure & said, "No, not today", as it was waaaaay up. Fortunately it went down as the day progressed. Somewhere during the day, I also pulled a muscle rather badly in my lower back & didn't even notice until that night.

The spring cleaning has continued with a bit being done each weekend. Let's face it - if we had tackled it for 2 FULL days on just one weekend, it would have been finished, but this way is a little less stressful, especially when we are still pulling out stuff that was stuck away in corners because it has too hard to deal with at the time. So far, we have attacked the clothes cupboards, followed by the "random access filing system" in the study, then the guest bedroom & the dining room area. We've done well!

Meanwhile, we have settled in to a reasonably peaceful relationship, punctuated by less frequent dummy-spits. OK, probably need a translation here, right? A dummy is a pacifier. Imagine a baby spitting its dummy out in anger, only to find that it actually needed it! We go out to our favourite restaurant in the neighbouring suburb every Friday, direct from work, to avoid the rush later in the evening. Nothing quite like being the only ones in the place (for a while) to be on first-name terms with all the staff & the owner.

And the dogs have had their warm weather wash & Kelly had his spring cut. We arranged for Datsun to go with him this time to have his toenails clipped. When Charlie arrived, we were amazed to see Datsun, who normally barks his head off at anyone who steps inside the gate, snuggle up to his foot! Man that guy has a way with dogs!

I finally made it successfully through the Blood Bank, with a photo to prove it. Last week, they got the needle in but nothing came out, so I aborted. So this time was third time lucky. Check out the explanation from last month & compare to the photo.

And Julie's second Police Check reply arrived, so now we can get that into Immigration & finally kick off the process for her Permanent Resident application.