Adventures with Grim

It was snowing when I walked Grim this morning, but just hardly. I could feel the tiny little flakes hitting my face before I could see them. But then, when you turned the right direction or the sunlight landed just right it looked like falling glitter, sparkling and dancing. Quite beautiful.

Yesterday was a fun packed day that I have decided to break into two posts. Yesterday morning we headed over to a friend's house to help them move. The project turned out to be a bit ridiculously over-staffed. All in all, there were 15 of us there. That huge number of helpers combined with their obsessive and extremely efficient preparations meant that each person carried about three loads out to the truck, if that, and then we were done. Carpool and Caravan over to Hilliard, another 3 or so trips each, and they were in their new place. It was nice seeing everyone. While I have been overly social with some people this quarter, there are others I have hardly seen. That is one of many strange things about graduate school - who you see or spend the most time with can change drastically from quarter to quarter depending on your schedules. Anyways, we hung out at their new place for a bit, which was quite nice, and they fed us all brownies and pizza. Yum!

When we got home from that I decided that I was in the mood to take Grim out. She hasn't had an exciting trip in quite sometime due to the weather. So, I loaded her in the car and headed out. Apparently it has been REALLY long since I took her to the metro park, because I completely forgot where it was and went to the wrong road. After a half hour driving around on that first road looking for it I decided to head back and try a different road. The traffic was horrible! Just packed around 270, and I realized too late I had also forgotten which lane I needed to be in. As I crept forward in my own lane, my attention was focused on the lane to my left as I needed to get over. Then, my lane stopped, but as my attention was elsewhere, I did not. Crash!

Yep. I rear-ended the lady in front of me!! My first car accident. I quickly and carefully got out of my car (no need to follow the accident by being ran over), as did the lady in front of me, and we went to inspect the vehicles. She looked like a Minnesotan, which was a bit of a relief (I pictured the potential for a leather-wearing 6'5" man with tattoos everywhere or a high powered business person who liked to yell...). Very luckily, very very luckily, there seemed to be no damage to her car, just a smudge of my paint on her bumper. On my car, I just cracked the plastic frame that holds the license plate on, and bent the license plate itself a bit. **enter sigh of relief**. I think her exact words were "This car has all kinds of scratches, I am not worried anout it, have a nice day". We did not even exchange names.

Back in the car, I continued to look for the metro park, somewhat cautiously and nervously now of course. It did not take me long to find it this time. As expected, the trail was a complete mud pit. Ok, I had expected a mud pit, but perhaps not as bad as it actually was, at least not on the trail, at least not on the elevated parts of the trail. They seriously need to lay down gravel or wood chips. Dirt, especially not the kind of dirt they used, just doesn't cut it. We did a short loop through the woods. The forrest still thinks its winter, dead and gray and depressing. I am not sure what I expected. Back at the car I did my best to wipe Grim off, then jumped back into the car and headed to the dog park. The dog park was much less disapointing. It was muddy, but a thicker, less messy mud then the trail had been, and there were several other dogs there. Grim ran, Grim played, Grim ran some more. I think she had a lot of fun. Then, back to the car and homeward. At the house I had to carry her up the stairs to the bathroom, lest she truly wreck the carpet with her muddiness. Just so you know, carrying a 90lb, lanky dog up a flight of stairs is no easy task, especially for a weakling like me. I had seen my brother carry my dog when he was here last summer, so I knew it was possible, but he is taller and stronger than I am. But we made it, gave her a bath right off sending massive ammounts of brown water and mud own our drain. Then of course I showed, because you cannot give a 90lb muddy dog a bath without needing one yourself.

That is my adventure with Grim for the week (or month). I think she enjoyed it!