Falling

How can it be almost 80 degrees on March 17, 2012? I can’t ever remember it being this warm this early in the year. I’m wearing shorts and I have all my windows open. It’s like summer, except there aren’t any leaves on the trees and the grass isn’t green yet.

We’ve had a string of 70+ days this week. Normally, we might have a couple of warm days here and there in the spring, but never like this. I don’t know how to act. I want to clean out the garage, rake leaves, and begin planting, but it’s way too early. You never know, we just might get a blizzard or something in a couple of weeks.

It is supposed to cool down into the 50s by the middle of next week. But this weather has been unbelievable.

It’s also great for St Patrick’s Day revelers. I don’t have a drop if Irish blood in me, so I never have cared much for St Patrick’s Day, which is really just an excuse to drink. St Paul has a strong historical tie to Irish immigrants, so the green beer is flowing on this day.

And with St Patrick’s Day being on a Saturday and also when the weather is so darn nice, I can imagine downtown St Paul is like a river of Irish whiskey right now. And the show moves to Minneapolis with another St Paddy’s Day parade beginning at 6:30 pm.

Joe ran errands this morning, while I took advantage of the nice weather and took a walk at Fort Snelling State Park. I wasn’t able to use the park much last year, because there were spring floods and summer floods, the shutdown which closed the state parks, and clean-up from the floods.

I decided to take Shadow and test my knee by walking around Pike Island, which is three miles around. Pike Island is located where the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers come together.

We’ve had a drought, so there was absolutely no flooding. The ground was relatively dry and there were a few ponds in the park that still had ice on them. But the rivers were flowing nicely. And there were lots of boats with eager fishermen in the water.

None of this ever happens on March 17. This is crazy weather.

It got crazy here last weekend, where Joe and I had it up to our chins with our trespassing neighbors, that we ended up calling the police after a bit of a confrontation. I don’t know how many times you have to tell people not to cut across your yard, not to use your driveway, not to take things from next to your garage. It was just getting worse as the weather got nicer. So we blew up at them and then I called the police.

The police talked to them and I also sent an email to the landlord, who I know. We haven’t had any problems this week. How difficult is it for people to stay on their own property?

The weirdest part of this week was when Joe and I were coming from work on Wednesday (Joe takes me to and from work). We drive on this street which has train tracks crossing it, and as we were coming up the hill, we saw a woman lying on the street next to a wheelchair, and a younger woman standing next to her, and there was also a small child, a girl who was about three or four.

We stopped. And Joe got out first. Joe’s had nurses training and had no trouble getting the older woman back into the wheelchair. The younger woman didn’t want us to call 911. The older woman had blood coming down her face, but she seemed to be OK. The little girl was scared.

We got everybody set and back on the sidewalk. We noticed they were going downhill, and it’s a really steep hill, and there wasn’t a seat belt on the wheelchair, so we asked if we could help get them home, but the young woman called her finance and he was going to pick them up by car.

So, we left. Joe told me later that he saw the younger woman with a bottle of booze under her jacket. They probably walked up the liquor store and were walking back when then older woman slid out of the wheelchair coming down the steep hill.

Weird, huh?

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only “normal” person on earth, and that’s not saying much.

Oh, and the last thing is that I got new front brakes for the flower van. I love that flower van.

New Couch

Police at Neighbors’

Fort Snelling State Parkin