We've gotten to that strange pre-Spring season, the season when 60-degree days are followed by 30-degree days, and when people are wearing T shirts when it's not quite T shirt weather. Lib's Dairy Treats opened on the first day of spring, and people are sitting outside eating ice cream, wearing winter coats.

The weekend was a glorious, warm affair that lured me outside to finish my ditch and to prune some trees (with much help from M.). Also took a lovely walk on Westport Island (near Wiscasset). 30 degrees this morning, and snow predicted for tomorrow/Wednesday. Argh! Guess it's a good thing I didn't pull the leaves off of my flower beds yet.

Several weeks ago I went to lunch with L. and an ex-boyfriend of hers who happens to work for a doctor who treats patients with neurological diseases using natural therapies. While eating french fries, we got into a discussion about alcoholism, depression, and sugar addiction, which later prompted me to get on the Internet and do some sleuthing about sugar addiction. I am a total sugar addict--even though I rarely eat it, I crave it a lot and think about it constantly. I'm very competent in most areas of my life, so I've always been somewhat embarrassed about this, thinking "what is my problem? surely I should be able to control this..." though almost everyone in my family has some problem with food/diet/depression/etc.

Enter Potatoes Not Prozac, handily available at the library. While I was there, I also got out Your Last Diet, by the same author. After reading them, I bought a copy of "Potatoes" and shipped it to E. so we can discuss it when I'm visiting her in NYC this weekend.

If you're addicted to sugar, or carbs, or alcohol, or are depressed, or just have food issues, check this book out. Or take the quiz or learn the basics. After just one week on the breakfast and the nighttime potato, I was no longer craving sugar, started having good dreams, and was waking up feeling happy. Whew! What a relief.

This afternoon I was driving back from my "Teaching the Exceptional Child in the Regular Classroom" class in Bangor, roughly 130 miles from my house. I was in my parents' Saab, since Maurice Cavalier's front end is out of alignment and he shakes a lot on the highway. About 40 miles south of Bangor, the Saab's engine started to occasionally cut out, all kinds of lights would come on, the speedometer would go to zero, and then everything would come back. A bit disconcerting when you're going 65 mph. Or so.

I immediately went into Disastah Recovery Mode, taking note of the highway, the position of neutral on the Saab (I don't usually drive an automatic), the hazard lights, etc., so if the engine totally died I would be able to get off the highway safely. I reviewed The Plan in my head: 1) turn on hazard lights, an arm's-length away on the right side of the dash; 2) brake; 3) ease to the right until I hear the right-hand wheels on the rumble strip, and slow way down; 4) slowly cross the rumble strip until I hear the left-hand wheels on it; 5) ease over to the right until the wheels are off the rumble strip, and come to a stop. I was ready.

About 10 seconds later I realized that this is my plan to be used if I suddenly go blind while driving. But I could see to get the car off the road. What a trivial task! A wave of relief swept over me.

From that point on, the Saab engine was fine for the rest of the drive.