Please pardon the smoke trail that seems to be following me. That’s just residue from the very warm credit card in my wallet. There are new numbers out that suggest many of us are dealing with that issue these days.

The latest numbers from the state of Kansas show that retail spending during the late-winter period was up in Lawrence and many other cities across the state.

The April sales tax report — which covers spending that took place from mid-February to mid-March — shows taxable sales in Lawrence rose by 5.8 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

That is the best monthly showing Lawrence has posted thus far in 2014, and it is particularly a nice bounce back from the March report when sales numbers grew by only about 0.5 percent.

For the year-to-date, the numbers also are looking better. Lawrence has now received four of the 12 sales tax payments it will receive from the state in 2014, and thus far taxable sales in Lawrence are up 3.8 percent compared to the same four-month period a year ago.

It is still early, but Lawrence is on pace to have better retail sales growth in 2014 than in 2013, when totals grew by 2.1 percent.

Across the state, several other cities have posted significant increases in retail sales for the year. At 3.8 percent, Lawrence falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. Here’s a look at year-to-date totals for several of the larger retail areas in the state:

• Dodge City: 1.2 percent

• Emporia: 5.8 percent

• Garden City: 4.7 percent

• Hays: down 23.2 percent

• Hutchinson: 3.1 percent

• Junction City: 1.0 percent

• Kansas City: 4.5 percent

• Leawood: down 0.2 percent

• Lenexa: 6.5 percent

• Manhattan: 1.4 percent

• Ottawa: 5.8 percent

• Overland Park: 6.9 percent

• Salina: 3.2 percent

• City of Shawnee: 4.5 percent

• Topeka: 2.3 percent

• Sedgwick County: 4.2 percent

This is usually the point in the report, however, where I tell you that you can’t have your cake and eat it too, by noting that when adjusted for inflation, our retail sales totals are still lagging the pre-recession days of 2008. But guess what? Feel free to shove that cake right down your gullet, smear the chocolate on your forehead and get those crumbs all the way up to your ears (Sorry, I sometimes get overly-enthusiastic about cake.) But the point is, even when adjusted for inflation, Lawrence’s numbers look pretty decent.

Here’s a look. The first number is just the actual sales dollars received by the city year-to-date. The second number is adjusted for inflation, or in other words, it represents how much those collections would be worth in 2014 dollars.

2014: $4.73 million

2013: $4.56 million ($4.63 million)

2012: $4.42 million ($4.55 million)

2011: $4.22 million ($4.43 million)

2010: $4.06 million ($4.40 million)

2009: $4.21 million ($4.64 million)

2008: $4.21 million ($4.62 million)

The numbers show that we’re starting to put some distance between us and the pre-recession totals of 2008. We’ve passed that threshold a few previous times, but haven’t been able to really sustain those levels. Perhaps 2014 will be the year that we finally put the great recession in our rear view mirror.

I’ll keep an eye out for that, although my view to the rear isn’t so clear at the moment. There’s a lot of smoke back there.

• A quick note for the record. Last month when we reported on sales tax numbers, there was an error in the data we received from the state of Kansas. It showed Olathe had a decline in its sales tax numbers for the year-to-date period. It rather had a slight increase. The state has since corrected the data.