Five Unrelated Things

1. It snowed again today. Several inches of snow. I would like for winter to end please.

2. Jeff has a conference to go to in Seattle in mid April, and I am tagging along. I am extremely excited to visit with friends, eat at good restaurants, and experience weather other than snow, even if it happens to be very gray and rainy.

3. This is what my cat looks like when she's getting her nails trimmed:

4. For several weeks, we have been telling everyone – including the movers – that our move date is April 26. However, our actual possession date for our house as it is written in our legal documents is April 29. I'm so glad we figured this out before showing up with all of our stuff on April 26 and finding out the house was not yet ours. Fortunately it was no problem to change the date with the movers.

5. My very exciting news this week is that for the past three days I have been primarily walking around the house with no aids – no walker, no crutches, no cane. I hesitate to call it walking – it is sort of more like the robotic waddling that a windup toy does – but quite exciting nonetheless. I can only go a short distance, only without much distraction, and only if I am within about one or two steps of something to grab onto in case I falter, but with practice I am sure it will get easier soon. At my physical therapy session last Thursday, my PT said she thought that for short distances at slow speeds my walking aids were probably helping me out more psychologically than physically, so we tried some walking unassisted and I passed the test. My fear of falling is adaptive and self protective (despite severe problems with balance and coordination I have not fallen once) but I am having to challenge that fear a bit because it seems that my physical abilities have surpassed my evaluation of them. This is a very good problem for me to have right now :-)