Today is Columbus Day. Did you know that? Theoretically, I knew that. But I didn’t think about it directly affecting my life today. It kinda did, though, although I didn’t realize why at first.

LG and I had to go to the Cox Digital store to switch our regular cable box for a second dvr today. We got there, I gathered the cable box and the kiddo and I walked up to the store. And saw an unbelievably long line. And turned around and went back to the car. I was trying to meet Rochelle at Target so we could hang out together while we did our respective shopping. Which we did. But there was no way I’d have made it if I’d stood in that line!

Target shopping finished, I decided to try the Cox store again hoping that maybe the morning rush had subsided. Ha! But, since I was already there and LG was in a reasonably good mood, I decided to just take a number and wait it out. My number was 42. They were on 22. So. not. kidding. A little while later, a chair opened up and I snagged it so I didn’t have to hold the cable box and corral LG while standing up. By this time there were on about number 29. Then the gentleman in the seat next to me tapped me on the arm and handed me another ticket. 35! I thanked him sincerely and breathed a sigh of relief because I wasn’t going to have to wait quite as long as I thought at first. Then three ladies walked in and as they were looking for a seat, the nice gentleman offered them his seat (there were two open ones next to his) because he was about to get called. He was 33 or 34 I think. The ladies made a comment about it being Columbus Day, and I said, “Oh, so THAT’S why it’s so busy in here! I’ve never seen it this busy.” They were really nice and were talking about their number (49), so I offered them my 42 and when they hesitated thinking I needed it, I explained that the gentleman had given me a lower number so I was giving them my original ticket.

One of the ladies said that was just “all kinds of good karma” and kind of like “pay it forward”. And it was. I felt really happy to have someone be kind to me, and it felt good to be kind to someone else. Hopefully they passed their 49 on to someone, too - maybe someone with a small child who was dreading the long wait.

Either way, I think she was right. It was definitely “all kinds of good karma”.

So Happy Columbus Day!

I got this in my email today. I’ve read it many times, but every time I read it, it makes me cry. And I really needed it today. By the way, I did a little research, and this story was originally written by Bob Perks - just to give credit where credit is due. (Read on …)

Today Rochelle can finally (legally) do pretty much everything except run for president. Yep, she’s 21 today! Do you remember when you were 21? I actually do. But since I didn’t start drinking until my 30s, the only exciting new thing I could do was buy lottery tickets.

Either way, go wish her a happy 21st bday will ya? And maybe tell her what exciting thing you did to celebrate!

Well, obviously it was a good day to begin with since it was our anniversary. But, the day started off good and just kept getting better. (Read on …)

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, (although I think it’s nice to give credit where credit is due - like how I stole the idea for my monthly letters with photos from Dooce, which I think I’ve mentioned before, but it’s been awile, so credit to Dooce for that!) and that being so, I’m totally stealing this idea from Miss Zoot because I think it’s such a great idea. This is the official week of De-Lurking as coined by Sheryl at Paper Napkin back in 2006. (De-Lurking Day was coined in 2005, and then changed to week in 2006.)

Anyway, Miss Zoot is donating a dollar to charity for each comment she gets on her de-lurking post today which is a wonderful thing to do. I do not get even close to as many comments in a WEEK as she gets on one post, but still, every dollar helps. So, for every person who comments on this post (lurker or not) today, I will donate $1 to the March of Dimes (which is linked right there on my side bar - see it?) to help fight prematurity (up to $50 which I’m sure I won’t reach anyway…lol!) - a cause near and dear to my heart since my sweetie was a preemie and my good friend’s twins were even smaller preemies. We were lucky that Little Girl didn’t have any major issues at 8 weeks premature and only spent less than 3 weeks in the hospital. My friend is lucky that her twins (born at 14 weeks premature) both survived - they have certainly had their problems, but they are doing well at four years old. So, leave me a comment and it’s worth a dollar to the March of Dimes, and if you feel so moved, make a donation yourself by clicking on the sidebar.

I’ll have a reflective/forward-looking post up later tonight or tomorrow, but today I’d just like to tell you about our morning and how we are ending our year.

My father was visiting yesterday and mentioned he had a pine tree in a pot that he needed to get rid of. He also had something at his house that needed fixing and wanted Mike to come do it before She Who Shall Not Be Named returns from her trip to Texas. So Mike decided to just follow him home yesterday and do it then since he didn’t know if he’d have time any other day.

He fixed what needed to be fixed, decided to take the tree, and got some paperwork dealing with some land my mother owned a share of. I’ll write more about that on a later date because maybe you all can give me some good advice about how to deal with making sure the land and the mineral rights become mine and LG’s and that swsnbn doesn’t get her grubby little hands on it just to spite me if something happens to my father first.

Anyway, the tree that Mike took was a tree that had grown from seed from the pine tree that had lived in front of the house I grew up in for most, if not all, of my life. If I can find a picture of the tree in front of the house, I will post it later. This morning, Mike planted it in our back yard. Hopefully it will not go into too much shock from being moved from pot to ground, but it’s been living outside and it’s pretty well established, so I’m hopeful it will be okay. I love that I have a little piece of my old house here with me. That’s a good thing.

The other thing we are doing this morning is cleaning/reorganizing LG’s room for the new year.

LG, by the way, is filthy. She loves to play in the dirt. She sure didn’t get that from ME (as my father attested to yesterday). But I guess it’s not a bad thing. Even if her clothes are FILTHY. *sigh*

As I said, I’ll write the obligatory out with the old/in with the new post later, but until then, I hope all of you are having a great weekend, that you have a safe New Year’s Eve and that 2007 brings you more joy than sadness.

True friendship means that you can get mad at each other and still love each other and need to make up quickly because you can’t stand being mad at each other. And hopefully, you’re both better for it.

Today Little Girl and I were in the bathroom waiting for her daddy to give her a bath. She turned away from me and started talking and gesturing to seemingly nothing, but she seemed like she was looking at something at the same height as she is. Mike and I started joking that maybe it was the old dogs. So I asked her if she was talking to Lady, Majerle or Bob. She looked up at me and said “Bah!” and then “Woof!” Which might have just been a cute little moment, except for the fact that Bob passed away before she was born. She never met him and the only Bob she really knows is a human being. Just another reason that I believe the spirits of those we love stay close to us.

Today is my 4th “blogiversary” so I thought I’d talk about how I got into blogging. It’s all Mr. Syndromes fault. I blame him. ;-) I had a website probably about 10 years ago which was mostly just a repository for links. This was long before blogging as it is now was even really thought of. Way back then Mr. Syndromes also had a different website than he does now and he had his own online diary that he wrote his thoughts in. It’s been awhile, but as far as I can remember there was no way to leave him a comment. You just read what he had to say and that was that unless you wanted to email him. We were out of touch for awhile, and I have no idea what became of that website, although once I did find some of the pages on the Wayback Machine which was quite an interesting trip down memory lane.

At some point after we got back in touch with each other, I found out about his “blog”. What on earth was a blog I wondered? So I read it and I even commented on it. The whole idea of comments from people you don’t know was just fascinating to me, but I wasn’t ready to plunk out the money for a domain of my own at that point. I mentioned the fact that I thought it would be fun to have a blog of my own one day and four years ago today he told me about Live Journal and hooked me up with a free account. And I guess the rest is history.

I love the interaction of comments. I love meeting new people and learning about their lives. I really love the fact that you can get so caught up in another person’s life that you’ve never met, maybe never even seen a picture of and feel like you are friends. I love that you can interact with people all over the world and share your lives with each other - boring or funny or sad or exciting as they may be. I have met so many wonderful people through this blog and I really can’t tell you how much it has meant for me as I have learned how to be a stay at home mom to Little Girl. I love that I can ask the internet to pray for my friends and not only do my friends pray and my regular readers pray but people who have never been to this site pray and ask others to pray. What a gift that is. So yes, the internet has it’s negative points. There are stupid people out there and they do stupid things. But all in all, blogland is a really great place to be a part of. So, thanks for visiting my little blog. Thanks for every single one of your comments. Thanks for getting involved in my crazy life in whatever way you’re involved. And here’s to the next four years. Huzzah! :)

I love overcast days. Marlene and I and the little ones went for a walk today (after taking last week off for her kids’ Spring Break) and the weather was just lovely. I was even able to take off my sunglasses since there was no glare to provoke an ocular migraine. (Anyone else get those from bright lights?) There was a nice breeze blowing, the air was fresh and cool, but not cold. It was just perfect. If only it could be like that more often! The weather will not be good for walking for much longer and we’ll have to switch to mall walking for the summer months.

On our walk we passed a lady standing out in front of her house who was wanting to strike up a conversation…asking if we were from the neighborhood and all. I wondered if she was just being friendly or if she was really worried about interlopers pushing two toddlers and a preschooler in strollers. Yeah, we’re really scary people. :P Anyway, I tried to be as nice and friendly as I could be without losing our pace too too much. Gotta keep that heart rate up you know?

As we were almost back to my house, Mike was driving off to work and I held up my hand to get him to stop so we could ask him a question and Marlene started singing “Stop! In the name of love!” which just totally cracked me up and is one of the reasons I really love spending time with her. Because in the reverse situation, I would probably do the same thing. The best kind of friends are the friends that don’t think you’re nuts when you do goofy things like that. Instead, they do them before you or with you or laugh when you do it. I love my friends. :)

You may remember me mentioning my friends who have been trying to adopt that lost the baby they were supposed to get at the 11th hour. Well, today, I got a call from these friends asking if they could come and re-borrow our infant car seat and swing. And after what she was asking me sunk in, I asked her what was going on???!?!?!?! And she said (and I’m totally getting choked up just typing this):

Oh my gosh. I am so happy and so excited for them, I can’t even begin to tell you. What a day for this to happen huh? Anyway, it will apparently be final on Friday and I assume he will be coming home with them then. I will get more details when they come by to get the stuff. But right now I just need to say God is good…all the time. :)

I got this in an email recently, and I loved it so much, I thought I’d share it with you…

THE PRICE OF CHILDREN

I have repeatedly seen the breakdown of the cost of raising a child,
but this is the first time I have seen the rewards listed this way.
It’s really neat!!

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from
birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family.

Talk about sticker shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition. But
$160,140 isn’t so bad if you break it down. It translates into:

* $8,896.66 a year,
* $741.38 a month, or
* $171.08 a week.
* That’s a mere $24.24 a day!
* Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice is don’t have children
if you want to be “rich.” Actually, it is just the opposite.
What do you get for your $160,140?

* Naming rights
* Glimpses of God every day.
* Giggles under the covers every night.
* More love than your heart can hold.
* Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
* Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, & warm cookies.
* A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate
* A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sand castles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
* Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:
* finger-paint,
* carve pumpkins,
* play hide-and-seek,
* catch lightning bugs, and
* never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to:

* keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
* watching Saturday morning cartoons,
* going to Disney movies, and
* wishing on stars.

You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator
magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand
prints set in clay for Mother’s Day, and cards with backward letters
for Father’s Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.

You get to be a hero just for:

* retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
* taking the training wheels off a bike,
* removing a splinter,
* filling a wading pool,
* coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a
baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream
regardless.

You get a front row seat to history to witness the:

* first step,
* first word,
* first date, and
* first time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family
tree, and if you’re lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called
grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in
psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human
sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank
right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo,
scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a
slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one
day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a
deal for the price!!!!!!!

Love & enjoy your children & grandchildren!!!!!!!
What a bargain ! ! !

ENJOY THE JOURNEY!!!!!

Okay, so technically her morning nap was about 12:30 pm, but she got a nap before lunch, so to me that counts as a morning nap. Whatever.

We only had a couple of things to get today - a “Dad” ornament from Hallmark; a super secret surprise gift for someone who might be reading this blog; and a pair of shoes and pantyhose for me to wear on Christmas Eve with my black velvet dress that fits (I tried it on to make sure) thank God. I have lovely velvet shoes to go with it, but they have high heels and I’m just not feeling that whole high heels thing - especially when I have to carry around almost 25 pounds of squirming toddler. So I found a really pretty pair of very low-heeled black velvet shoes AND they were on sale. Doubly cool. I hate pantyhose. I wear them maybe once a year at Christmas because I’m dressed up a little more than usual. HATE. THEM. But I got some. Blech.

After the shoe store we stopped in front of the pet store where there was a black lab puppy and two golden lab puppies in the window playing happily. Little Girl was entranced. And in some ways it made me feel better because even though I will miss Majerle terribly when she is gone, I know that Little Girl will love having puppies around to play with and torment…puppies who won’t get grumpy at her if she pulls on their ears or grabs their fur a little too roughly or knocks them down trying to hug them. Majerle is beyond that now. She’s just living out her days and we’re trying to make her as comfortable as we can as long as she still wants to be here with us. When the time comes all of us will know it. And it will be hard, but I saw a glimpse of the future today and it made me smile. There will be more furry friends to lavish our love upon when the time comes.

As we were exiting the elevator on the lower level of the mall on our way out, we ran into one of my favorite former students and her mom and sister getting ready to get on the elevator to go up. It’s funny how that worked out because I had thought the shoe store was on the lower level and when I found out it wasn’t had to go back up the elevator again, so had I not made that mistake, I probably wouldn’t have run into them. But she was a great parent and we still keep in touch via email. It was neat for them to finally be able to see Little Girl in person and of course I got to catch up on the juicy gossip of the school. Crazy stuff going on there, but then again, what else is new? The school I worked for has always been top notch academically, but a little nuts behind the scenes - part of the reason I don’t miss it all that much.

Now I’m home and doing dishes. Seriously. As we speak I’m doing dishes. I LOVE having a dishwasher…lol! Oh all right, I always had a dishwasher, but the last dishwasher didn’t do the dishes whenever I wanted him to…lol!

I also came up with the idea that Mike needs to start a tradition of giving Little Girl a special gift every year like my father always gave me a doll - even after I was an adult. Now he gives Little Girl a doll. I have some ideas for Mike, but I’m going to try and let him come up with his own tradition because it’s between them right? It’s just something that I always thought was special - even when I got older and rolled my eyes at my father for giving me dolls. It was still a special something between the two of us and I want them to have that as well. Nothing like giving Mike something else to do two and a half days before Christmas right? :D

Mike also decided that we were going to break out (err…not literally I hope) the glass ornaments this year because we probably won’t be able to do it again for quite awhile. Since she’s not going to be able to get to the tree and Majerle is too old to be wildly wagging her tail around it, it seems like the logical year to do it. No, the tree’s not decorated yet. It’s got lights though! Gimme a break…lol! I think it will be very pretty and if it ever gets finished? I’ll take some photos for y’all.

In the meantime, I hope your last-minute preparations are going well and you’re feeling excited and/or serene instead of stressed and strung out. :)

Look up at me as we listen to our little angel babbling away in her crib, smile, and say, “I love that little girl.”