When I was a little girl, my father was a firefighter. There is even a picture of me sitting on the back of the fire engine on top of the hoses next to his coat and helmet. I always knew that my father had a dangerous job. I knew that he put his life at risk when he fought a fire, but it’s what his father did before him…the family business if you will. However, knowing his job was dangerous and really understanding his job was dangerous are two different things. My father retired from the fire department when I was a freshman in high school. And that might have been that.

But after I was married, we went on a trip to Universal Studios. And at Universal Studios, there was an attraction called Backdraft - a 10,000 degree blast furnace that simulated what it was like to be in a real fire. And, standing there in that blazing heat for those few seconds, tears came to my eyes, because I realized - really realized - for the first time, what my father had faced in his job. And it was an eye opening experience.

Fast forward to today when our little church band plays the church festival. It was hot. Well, okay, it was really warm. (I reserve the word hot for temperatures over 110 degrees.) It was about 92 degrees when we finished. The first set was great. We sang, we played, we bantered. It was fun! And I got to live out my girlish dream of being a singer on a stage with a band. That was unbelievably cool. Then we took a break. And then we went back up on stage to do one more set. But we were hot. We were tired. And we made some booboos. Nothing really huge. We just screwed up lyrics here and there, missed some entrances, messed up some endings, but nothing really horrible. And the point was to have fun, so no biggie. But oh. my. god. I was so frigging exhausted.

My husband has two “careers” I guess you could say. His main career is music. And he’s been gigging professionally since before I even met him. And I’ve gone to his gigs. I’ve sat in bars for the whole night watching him play. I’ve helped him load in and load out. I’ve sung at church with him since before we were married. And I’ve also performed in choirs for many years. I’ve even sung a song or two with bands that he has been in. But I’ve never had to carry a concert (or in this case co-carry a concert) for two hours. And it was exhausting. If you perform, I mean really perform, you can’t help but leave part of yourself on the stage. Performing is all about cutting yourself open and giving a piece of yourself to your audience. If you do it right. And when you do that, it wipes you out.

So today, I realized that my husband really does work hard for a living. He doesn’t just “play music”. He performs and he works hard and he does what he loves and so even though he is a little better at pacing himself and not exhausting himself as much as I did, and even though he doesn’t normally perform outside in the (very) warm weather (there was a tent and a fan though, thank goodness), he does work hard. And just like a burst of 10,000 degree heat made me “get” my father’s job a little better so many years ago, today I “got” my husband’s job a little better, too.

Mike’s band played the church festival this afternoon, so Little Girl and I went over to hang out and watch him. His mom and his grandpa were there for awhile as well. It was fun and Little Girl kept getting stolen from me (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because she’s hard to keep up with at this point in time…lol!).

It was kind of warm today - mid 80s - well, that’s not too bad, but it is when there are grills going and the sun is pounding down on the pavement and there are tons of people around. Anyway, by the time Little Girl and I got home we were both tired and sweaty and in need of a bath and bed. Obviously, she got her bath first. And all was going well, until I called Mike on the phone as I sat by the tub and she played. Why you ask? Well, because as I was talking to him, she pooped. In the tub. Yep. She’s almost 17 months old and this is the first time that has happened. So I hung up with Mike and got her out and let her run around the bathroom naked while I got the poop out of the tub. Ew. Luckily it wasn’t the soft, runny kind, but the firmer kind. So it wasn’t a horrible clean up. But still.

Then I put her to bed, got in the shower myself and that was that. But yeah. Ew. Please tell me this happens to everyone. And darn Mike for not being home. :P

• Mike’s cell phone ringing at 7:15 am and waking me up so I didn’t get enough sleep for the second night in a row. (Yes, yes, I know many of you get up way earlier than that, but we live on a later schedule around here which means I’m probably up much later than you are so hush. Also, people shouldn’t be calling at 7:15 in the morning anyway. Sheesh.)

• Little Girl smeared part of her breakfast all over her clothes right before we were getting ready to go on a walk with Marlene and crew, so I had to go and change her.

• As we were walking into Joann’s we had to stop and wait for a car that was backing out because the driver was too busy talking on her cell phone to bother to look to see if there were pedestrians around. (Here’s the thing: before I had Little Girl to drive around, I did talk on the cell phone a lot when I was driving, BUT I was always very careful to be aware of what was going on around me. Now I rarely, if ever, talk on the phone when she is in the car. Priorities.)

• Joann’s was having a big sale and it was pretty packed. The problem is that the aisles are too narrow for more than one shopping cart to fit and I kept getting trapped in the aisles because there were other carts and other people at either end. Joann’s, if your aisles are too narrow for more than one cart, then you have too much crap in your store. Sorry.

• The forecast for Monday is 98 degrees for the high. Ugh. Mike is taking the entire day off (to recover a bit from the last two weeks of craziness) and we are planning to go to the zoo. But it’s gonna be 98. Ugh. Just ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. (To put this into perspective, it’s been in the low 70s today.)

• And also, I need a nap. *sigh*

In the comments of my Thursday Thirteen this week (just scroll down a bit and you’ll find it because I’m too lazy to make a link), Susie suggested I make an audioblog post of my little one talking. We did try some recordings of her but the quality was yucky and I didn’t have the patience to edit it. I will try and do a better recording soon, though. In the meantime, here’s a quick little recording I made on my cell phone to attach to a picture that I sent her papa while he was working the other day.

Click here.

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Today is “Keep Your Daughters and Sons from Going to School Because Whoever Came Up with this Actually Very Good Concept Didn’t Have Enough Brains to Schedule it During the Summer when They Wouldn’t Be Missing School to Go to Work with Their Parents” Day.

Thirteen Words Little Girl Can Say at Almost 17 Months Old I am exhausted and busy so I thought I’d make it easier on myself this week by sharing some of Little Girl’s ever-expanding vocabulary. Next week should be a little more verbose though. 1. dog (her first word after Mama and Dada…it used to be just Dahhh! when she would see Majerle…now it’s either dog or gog) 2. thank you (take youuuuuuuu! She uses this when she hands us whatever little thing she has picked up off the floor because that is what we always say to her when she gives us things. But the past few days she has also started saying it when we give her things.) 3. cracker (pronounced cwackah…this refers to any food other than bananas) 4. banana (it’s very hard to actually type how she says it, but it’s something like “bladana” and it’s very funny…she loves bananas and she will point them out in the grocery store, in a picture book, everywhere) 5. ball (balllllll…the best part about this word is the shape she gets her mouth into…so cute and funny…everything spherical is a ball including an orange) 6. clock (pronounced clck with no vowel…my in-laws have a Rhythm Clock that opens out into a flower with petals and plays a song on the hour…as soon as we get there, she goes to Grandma, holds out her arms to be picked up and says clck!!!! And of course, Grandma makes the clock play for her.) 7. woof (She learned this from Melody and all living breathing animals are called “woof”. But she will answer the question “what does the dog say?” correctly as well.) 8. bye bye (pronounced bah bah…almost always accompanied by a goodbye wave) 9. hieeeee (she says this to anyone and everyone and she says it constantly when we are on the phone) 10. pretty baby (pronounced prih-ee babyyyyyy…she uses this to identify all clothing, I guess because we always tell her she is pretty when she gets dressed) 11. bear (pronounced beh…this is used to identify all stuffed animals and/or dolls) 12. good girl (refers to Melody and sometimes to herself…she hears it a lot…lol!) 13. that (pronounced dat…refers to anything she can’t classify as bear, ball, cracker, woof, clock, or pretty baby) And I can’t leave out uh oh (pronounced “uh ooooo”) and dance (pronounced da sss) because they are both so darn cute. Happy Thursday! Check out the Auto Link and visit the new Thursday Thirteen website. Please only leave your link if you’ve done a Thursday Thirteen. And leave a comment too to make me feel good. :) Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

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First of all, Simon apologized. If you want to know why, you have to click! (Read on …)

Mike is home today and I took the opportunity to go to the grocery store all. by. myself. Whee! Yes, I went to Albertson’s. And yes, people, yes they have removed the offending placards from the grocery carts AND the grocery carts all have new seatbelts. So next week when I have to take her with me again she will be safe and sound. It’s nice to know corporate America actually listens to one voice (albeit a very loud and obnoxious one at times). Thank you Albertson’s! (Read on …)

I just watched my little girl run to the back door to follow her daddy outside to play.

Just over two years ago we were sitting in the fertility specialist’s office and he was telling us what our problems in conception might be and how we “might” be able to fix them…no guarantees of course. He sent me off with instructions to get some testing done when I had my next cycle. I never had that next cycle.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact day we conceived, but it was right around this time two years ago. After we had gone to the fertility specialist who had not really given us a lot of hope. After we had begun thinking that adoption might be the best option for us. After we had started coming to grips with the fact that we might never get pregnant. We conceived.

Through all of that I learned one great lesson: there is always always hope.

Because today I watched my little girl run to the back door to follow her daddy outside to play.

Classic love songs with Andrea Bocelli and David Foster. Wow, a real producer! What a thought! (Read on …)

And the “week from hell” is ovah! And we survived! And most impressive of all, neither Marlene nor I lost our voices. (Read on …)

I feel sort of guilty describing a week (well actually over a week, but who’s counting) where I have had to be at church (for some reason or or another) every day but one as “hell” week. But, there you have it. Tonight is the last Confirmation Mass and we will finally be done. Until next year, of course.

The rest of this week was supposed to be quiet until festival and really for me festival is not that much of a big deal except that Mike has to be there for a lot of it. However, two of his bands cancelled and he had a spot to fill. So who did he ask? Why the Generations of Faith Band of course. (That would be me, Marlene, Rochelle and the drummer and guitar player if you’re wondering.) So, now we have to do the gig with basically no rehearsal. So that will be fun. Marlene and I are going to rehearse with Mike on Thursday morning and come up with the set lists and exactly which songs we’ll be able to do, but the band as a whole will not be rehearsing together. No pressure there. Although the band plus another singer or two has been doing all the confirmations over the last week so it’s not like we’re not warmed up and “in the zone”. But still. Some of the songs we haven’t done since last year and that makes the no rehearsal thing just a little nerve-wracking. But it will be fine I’m sure. It’s not like we’re getting paid or anything. So if we screw up? Who really cares? Just keep singing.

Um. Yeah. So pray for us. That’d be good. And we are going to make a “live” recording. So I’ll try to put some clips up if I can. Just for fun.

Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere and filter down to Earth as dust. The total weight of the Earth increases by about 27 tons each day from this space dust - almost 10,000 tons each year.

So basically dusting is pointless right? I am totally scratching that one off my to-do list.

This afternoon we (as in Mike, Marlene, me and another male singer) provided the music for a wedding ceremony. I have to say it was the most flawless wedding ceremony I’ve ever seen. There were a couple of teeny weeny glitches but nothing that involved the music. In fact, the music was just about as close to perfect as live music can get. The bride was radiant. The groom beamed. It was a lovely wedding. (Read on …)

Now if my prom had been somewhere like these, I might actually have wanted to go.

My favorite part of the article is: “The Glendale school district is trying to move away from hotel settings to discourage students from renting rooms in hotels. That is why high school proms are hitting a lot of government buildings in Phoenix,” said Tim Evans, a math teacher who organized the prom. “We wanted to pair education with prom.”

Hey, whatever works.