Mabel, mabel, sweet and able...

Meet Mabel! Is she a lovely little thing or what?

Our dear old van, having very recently had its transmission replaced, and, actually, numerous other things as well, continued despite our most affectionate and extravagant care to behave with increasing eccentricity. Declining to change gears, stopping dead in its tracks, that sort of thing. We (well, Ed) tried various remedies, but… 

So, we’ve been looking for a “new” vehicle to trade the poor old van in on. We thought something more fuel efficient would be an awfully good thing, given the amount of driving involved with Travis driving to the community college in a town one direction and Katie being driven to the high school in a town the other direction. Actually, anything this side of a Sherman tank would be more fuel efficient that our van (a Sherman tank, in case you are curious, gets, optimally, approximately .91 mpg cross country, 1.72 mpg on the highway), but we set our sights on a Nissan Altima when we read that they are supposed to be safe, reliable, and get twice the mileage of the Windstar (which, in fairness, was about 16 mpg, so, substantially better than the Sherman tank). It took a while to find one that met our needs and our budget, but we think we found Perfection on Friday last!

And isn’t she a pretty color? When I explained to Ed and the kids Why her name had to be Mabel they rolled their eyes, pityingly. But, just look at her! She’s the color of…. Wait for it…. Mabel syrup! (And, yeah. All three of them, Ed, Travis, and Katie, have kindly, quietly said to me, “You Know it’s Maple syrup, right? M-a-p-l-e?” Well, yes, I do. But it’s close enough,and she Looks like a Mabel – all sweet and helpful. And she drives beautifully, and her radio works, and she even has one of those clever back up cameras, which I just love. She smelled rather dreadful when we brought her home – the salesman said it was the cleaning stuff or something – but it's dissipating already, and her windows roll down just fine, so that’s not a huge thing. And she goes along just like a dream!

 And it's starting to look spring-ish!

Finn has continued to show improvement in his behavior, though he's still not remotely trustworthy left unsupervised with the run of the house, but confined to the back room he is generally pretty good!

This is how he likes to keep me company while we read. The mess and box were Katie's, but she's since cleaned up and at the moment that space looks fairly respectable. Of course, you'll have to take my word for that.

Doesn't he look like a quiet old thing?

This is where he likes to be when I sit at my computer. It makes typing challenging.

Short cut off the couch in pursuit of Livy (you can just see the tip of her raccoon tail!).

That's it. We're all still ticking along, and I need to go finish "Daughter of Time" for the discussion at the library on Monday, just on the off chance that someone aside from Dad shows up to talk about it with me!