really, officer

I imagine I'd probably see signs of spring appearing all over the place, if I were to pay attention. Birds, buds, dogs in heat, all that good stuff. But the ones that catch my eye seem to all fall firmly in the "transportation" category. Specifically, I'll call this category "my car."

(This story could also be titled "the almost-death of the little Civic that preferred winter in Minnesota, thank you very much.")

A few of the signs I'm enjoying most are:

1) For the first time since November we can actually park on the street without blocking a lane of traffic.

2) All but the last little smidge of ice is gone from my driveway now, which means I am no longer covered in strange bruises from banging into my car or the cold hard ground as I walked to and from my car every day.

3) With any luck, we may have already survived the last of the semi-weekly snow/sleet/rain/freezing rain/snow/ice/rain storms of the winter. And I will not have to carry shovel-fulls of WATER down the street to dump into the storm drain (now that we know where it is again) anymore ever again (or, until next winter). Do you know how heavy shove-fulls of water are? REALLY heavy!

My favorite sign of spring, though, is that some of the potholes around town are finally being filled, now that it's less likely that another storm will open them right back up again within a couple days.

This is not a small project. The roads around here look like asphalt swiss cheese after this past winter. Driving down the street requires either really good shock absorbers or very quick reaction time, as most of us swerve like drunks or 14-year-old joyriders to avoid taking years off the lives of our cars and/or the people inside them.

I'm just waiting to be stopped and accused of driving under the influence. And when it happens, and they ask me where the influence comes from, all I will be able to say is "winter".