Snow Cave

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Two posts in one day?!? Well...I had to share pictures of the snow. Now snow may not be a big deal to people living in other regions (Canada?) but in Omaha, NE - it's rare to have such a blizzard. It started with rain last night, then freezing rain, then thunder snow, now just SNOW. And WIND. The city is in shut down mode. White out conditions, closed roads, a 27 car pile up! The hubby came home from work when I called to insist that he come home from work and now he's out digging out the huge drifts so that the new drifts can come make their way.

What has been frustrating for me today is that every window is caked with ice and snow. I feel like I'm living in a cave. What I love about a snow day (besides naps) is sitting in the chair, sipping coffee, looking out the window. I begged hubby to scrape the windows while he was out too, which he kindly did. My one phobia is claustrophobia. I do not like feeling trapped in my own home. At least now we're all safe and warm. I'd better go, Sesame Street is on and I'm missing it!

Thanks to the hubby for braving the cold - at least the drifts won't reach 10 ft. high! (I hope!) The drifts on our back patio are hip high on the hubby, at he's 6'4"!

Stay warm good friends! ~Melanie

Just another snowy Thursday

Another snow day! Woo hoo!!! I had a really hectic day yesterday and being blessed with a day at home is a wonderful remedy. So - thanks to this horrible weather front that is making so many peoples' lives difficult this morning. I'm sorry to those stuck in ditches or whose daycare centers are closed...but it sure is nice to be home.

Before I go on to what I really wanted to confess this morning - must give Alpha Dogma one tidbit. The green globe link is between the button that changes the font color and the left justification tab in the main 'create post' window. See it now?

Okay - on to much more important (ha) things. I have a confession to make. It's something I don't usually admit to. It's kind of like how I hid the fact that I liked Britney Spears in my early 20's, and how I don't admit in mixed groups to listening to a cranked up Bing Crosby CD at home, it's also how I keep most other embarrassing guilty pleasures hidden away in secret. So here goes: I watch American Idol. Every week. Now that it's to the competition, I make sure not to miss an episode. There were times in years past when I even called to vote towards the end.

Last night B and I were watching it (the boys were in the room too) and we danced each time the girls got up to sing. It started me thinking? Is this my generation's American Bandstand? They are calling Ryan Seacrest the next Dick Clark. Some of the kids getting their start on that show are becoming huge stars. One just won an Oscar. Others have Grammys. You might say who cares? But my point is that I hope when B's long term memory kicks in here in a couple of years that she remembers doing this with me fondly. I hope she remembers how goofy I looked when I dance and how I always say "B, you should have dance lessons, but not from mommy!" I hope that it's something we watch together for years to come. When I was in about 2nd grade, my mom started letting me stay up later on Thursday night to watch Knot's Landing. Man, I loved that show! It ended when I was in high school. I remember watching it with my mom, it was something we shared. I hope I have something like that with B. I challenge you: admit those guilty pleasures in a comment here. Or something you share with your kids - silly or not.

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.