What's the code for what, huh?

I'm making a pot of coffee. I'm seeing to it that the minors in the household are properly fed. I'm learning html code. What, huh?

Alpha Dogma is teaching me some new tricks. Kudos and thanks to you, Alpha Dogma! See how I did that? I just made this little code and then it makes the name of the person (or their pen name) a link to their blog. Ooooo, I feel so smug. My husband, who is equally smug, also just walked by and showed me a little link button I can push at the top of this page that does the same thing (a globe with a chain link). I'm still proud that I figured out how a code makes things work (well this one thing). I must admit it boggles my mind - more than a wee bit.

This morning there is a nice layer of snow all around the town. Forecasts of rain and not-freezing temps this week will leave things much less winter wonderlandish, I'm sure. But this morning, it's quite lovely.

See my little Brenna, helping her daddy shovel snow with the dust pan from our garage.

I hope everyone enjoys their day as much as I intend to. Coffee's on, I must go.

* Thoughts and prayers to my friend, Jacque, who is back in the hospital this weekend - hopefully receiving the treatment she needs to return her breathing to "normal" and get her back home

quickly. *

speechless?

When I was typing my title - I actually misspelled speech. Speach?!?! That's a perfect example of my brain right now. The fog is back. I think it's a combination of longer hours this week (we worked one long day for parent-teacher conferences) and a stressful week at home. There are these moments - moments when I think that being married is hard and that I should have had a class in my 181 credit hours of bachelor's and graduate work that dealt with marriage. As I type that, I remember that I did. I took a class called Marriage & Family Relations. A fat lot of good that did. I guess it's nothing you can learn from a book. It requires on the "job" training. We're learning as we go. I'm not going to go into details. I'll just leave it at being married is hard. And I'm so in the thick of it that I can't even think of a witty, optimistic follow-up to that. The light at the end of the tunnel is that my mood always lifts when the hubby and I spar and things always return to sunny when that happens. Now I'm just waiting...for the mood to lift. Come on mood, lift. Please.

I just don't even have words for how things are today. I am really glad it's Friday and that I've got a low-key weekend to recharge. I'll check back in when I've got more words. Hence the title, speechless. Comments regarding marriage, happy or otherwise, welcome and encouraged!

One false move and Barbie gets it...

My little girl has this amazing imagination. Barbie is actually not in any danger in the ball popper. She's "in her seat, in the woods". Right now there is a stuffed giraffe in the fridge, playing hide and seek. No peeking, because peeking is cheating. I was just informed. She mostly plays these games that she's made up. If she happens to watch a cartoon or movie, then she's got to have corresponding characters that she can hold and act out with right along side the TV. She loves little dolls and miniature play sets. And lately, she's really starting to like Barbie.

The fact that she likes Barbie pleases me to no end. When I was young, Barbie was my favorite toy. I would build a whole village, with my best friend, Jenna. We had a laundromat, a park, a rock-n-roll concert, a house, of course, and three vehicles. There were many Barbies, Kens, and Skippers with which to act out my childhood fantasies. We did this over and over. Our own little soap opera. Barbie didn't give me body image issues or anything else negative. Just a whole lot of fun.

Raising a daughter is a dream come true for many reasons, but one of them is the joy of reliving my own childhood. What was your favorite toy as a child?

SNOW DAY

I feel like a kid. Wishing for a snow day. Predictions are for snow, ice, typical Nebraska-in-February fare. And I'm dreaming of a snowy, stay-at-home Tuesday.

I'll never forget in high school, there was this day when I missed the news that school was a late start (I was driving myself to school by then). I got all the way up to school and there were no cars. It was the most bizarre thing. So I go all the way home and realize I could have slept in. That sucked! My mom worked for Head Start at that time and always had to leave the house really early. She obviously hadn't heard the news either, before she left. That was my first taste of being an "adult". Making it to school with no one to tell you not to go.

You can bet I'll be the first one listening to the radio in the morning - dreaming and wishing and hoping and planning....

Come on snow day!

Adulthood

I think that I sometimes forget that I am supposed to be an adult...a real grown-up. I've got two real kids, a real husband, I've been a home owner for four years, but I forget that this is really real. I'm in charge of all of this (with a little help from the hubby). I'd much rather do things like play Barbies with Brenna, thumb through a magazine, watch some television, or create another page in my kids' scrapbook than do things like washing floors, vacuuming, dusting, or any other household chore. But there's no other way (aside from waiting until Jay goes on a cleaning rampage, which I sometimes do). So today - I sucked it up and cleaned out that fridge. It had really been neglected. Sure, I wipe the shelves now and then. Or I'll clean out all the leftovers and throw them out now and then. But to take out all the shelves, wipe it all down, and then pull it out and clean behind it? Well...confession time...we have lived here for about 17 months, and today was the first time I had done all of that so thoroughly.

Now this may seem very boring and mundane to most neat and tidy people. But to me? It was a very momentous occasion - worth a pat on the back. I took my adult ADD, put it on a shelf, rolled up my sleeves, and did a real grown-up task. What's next? The caulk around my bathtub? The baseboards around the entire house? The dust filled registers? They'd all better beware - I'm on a roll! Hey - maybe I'll start being a grown-up all the time. Or not.

Let's not get carried away.