Mugabe sure is an asshat, isn't he?

I'm still recovering from the loss of the Taurus, silly shallow me. I have a friend who lives near a big dealership in Freeport, IL, and looking at their website...cars are sure a lot more reasonable out there. Ramey's website is down, I'll go there this week to have a look around anyway.

I'll be going to Florida(2,000 miles up the a-hole of the universe)again in early May. My mother fell and broke her hip in late January, and had surgery, and my sister and I are doing rotations in and out of there, to make sure she gets good care. Because if you're elderly, and in Florida...all you get is assembly line medicine(funny how the anti-national health people use this kind of thing as a reason to not go national health, as if it could get any worse..my friends in Canada and Europe don't have this problem) unless you have someone there to advocate for you. Already..her surgical staples were left in place a week longer than they should have been, and caused an infection, and more than one month(almost two!) after surgery...her right leg is swollen and bruised, still. She's getting physical therapy 5 days a week, but still cannot put much weight on her right leg. And the surgeon wants her to come to his office for a followup. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Bitch gonna knock them out. And go to Webster's Flea Market.

We had some very nice thunderstorms come through here all afternoon. Scary lightning, lots of thunder. A balmy 60 degrees. I sent it off to the east, so...enjoy, my east coast friends! There was one that was a bit violent, with marble sized hail and high winds. So...burning is off for now, as this thunderstormy pattern is supposed to last the next 5 days or so. Burn or no burn..I'm glad it's spring-like. A tufted titmouse is sitting really high in the branches of the silver maple in my back yard singing really loudly. Scroll down a bit to hear this guy. Jeez...he woke me up from a sound sleep.

And Mugabe IS an asshat.

23 lbs. lost so far. I've switched to pilates, step and keeping up with my walking, though I'm jogging a bit, too. And I quit smoking and drinking. I'm really crabby, and half mad with the lack of my favourite substances.

Fare thee well, my dear Taurus

I sold my faithful 1997 Taurus today...for $80. That's about all it was worth(physically, not emotionally)..it needed a whole new pollution control system($2500) and front end work ($1300). I really, really miss that car. It served me well, it took me up and down the East Coast, and to Florida quite a few times. I put 130,000 miles on it...it had 67K on it when I bought it. The engine is still in excellent shape...I took good care of it.

Before I turned it over to the buyer...I took it out and ran it up and down Bonner Road at about 85mph just for old time's sake. Ran like a top, even after sitting for 4 months. I miss that car.

Tuesday morning I will go out and look for another Taurus....they're good cars. I'll go back to the place where I bought my old Taurus, too. Ramey's Auto Sales in Zion, IL. Clovis Ramey passed away about a year and a half ago, I'm hoping his family is as good with cars as he was. He let me take my Taurus for a week so I could check it out before I bought it. My pal Henway Twingo turned me on to Ramey's, for which I am eternally grateful.

The thing that bugs me about buying a used car now is getting a "Katrina" car. I guess now more than ever we need CarFax?

Today was a nice day, in the low 50's. Did a bit of gardening, mostly clean-up, the ground is still frozen. I wanted to do a burn, but Dan was home and he tends to get all freaked out when I burn my "prairie, " even though I'm literally standing on top of the thing, garden hose in hand, while it burns. The neighbor guys like to come over and watch, Hee hee. Boys and fire.