Ah the scent of spring.  Today on our pre-lunch walk it smelled of old, wet soil and something that could be cat urine.  I walk every full day that I'm at work with a couple colleagues.  We tromp up the road behind the school that leads to an alternative secondary school that teaches innovative agriculture.  They have greenhouses and vineyards, orchards and fields.  It's very pretty.  We only walk for about 20 minutes but it gets us out and moving.  I've also been swimming once a week at a local pool with two other mothers.  It is wonderfully warm but they use so much chlorine my eyes burn through the next day.  I don't want to think what they are trying to kill in that water. 

After school today we went to a local shopping district, a sort of open mall, to buy Grace ski equipment.  It seems as though she will be skiing enough to make it worth the while.  After one season she will have made up the cost just by saving on rentals.  She has a school ski trip next Thursday and has been invited to Switzerland for a week in April with a friend and her family!  Can you imagine?  Anyhow, after buying her things we went to, of all places, McDonald's, for dinner.  It was not my choice and in fact I just ate an ice-cream.  I don't eat fast food at home, I'm sure as H*** not going to eat it here.  Grace and GP sneak out for it every once in a while because I am a anti fast food Nazi evidently.  And here's the kicker.  At least in the States it's cheap and fast.  Here it costs twice as much and the lines are practically out the door.  This is the country where for 5 bucks you can get a delicious, "brick" oven pizza (the ovens are actually made of cement but they are wood burning), with all fresh ingredients.  I'm not spending almost 8 dollars on a lousy McD's burger. 

We finally have curtains up in the kitchen.  We've owned this place for 23 years.  There are various explanations for why we haven't had them but mainly it's because we haven't been able to figure out how to put them up.  Our window frames are metal.  Our other curtains all hang from the ceilings but that is not an option in the kitchen as the windows are over the counters and the curtains would be in the way.  Anywho..... So I found some fabric I like and took it to my mother-in-law who was a seamstress in her day, and she whipped them up in no time.  Gp concocted a way to install them as we want them, (vertically open-able not horizontally), and we hung them.  The evening that GP brought the finished curtains back from his mother she sent the extra fabric back too.  She said to hold on to it in case of a fire so that she could patch them if need be.  What the?  xxoo me