Pray for Snow

Well. After that horrible frozen December we had, now it's been warm and wet and sloppy for a good week... and most of our snow is GONE! This is a very bad thing, because my nephew from Georgia is coming for a visit later this month and he is absolutely counting on playing in the snow. I don't think mud was what he had in mind. He can see that at home.

Right now, in my yard, there are a few dirty piles of leftover snow (you can tell where the snowmen were because now there is what looks like a snow rabbit where one stood and just a glob of dirty snow where the other was). All around the dirty piles are - no, I'm not kidding - GREEN grass. Green. I know it's just leftover chlorophyll from last summer, but it looks very weird in January, let me tell ya!

Anyway, we are praying for snow for Nephew N's sake.

As my dad put it, "So much for nuclear winter."

Movie Goer's Revenge

Heading off to see the Chroni(what?)cles of Narnia tonight, Barry had a brilliant notion: Popcorn bags activated not on microwaves, but on cellphone transmissions.

It'd be such sweet justice: The more obnoxious movie patrons are yappin on their cellphones, the more your popcorn pops up fluffy and delicious. In fact, if you were sitting right next to a yapper, you could hold your bag up next to the phone and it'd really take off.

UPDATE THE NEXT MORNING: How was the movie? It was great. ("Gweat," said Little Miss A sleepily from her carseat on the way home.) I cried and I cried and I cried. And then I cried again. And then I got teary. And then I cried some. But don't mind me; that's the mark of a good movie, in my opinion. I cried most when the White Witch's filthy minions mocked Aslan and stripped him of his royal mane, when he went willingly to the table rock to be the innocent sacrifice for a sinner. I completely fell apart.

Yes, by all means, go see it.

And remember, He's not a tame Lion after all.

Carols for the Mentally Ill

For the...

Schizophrenic? Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disordered? We Three Kings Disoriented Are

Amnesiac? I Don't Know if I'll Be Home for Christmas

Narcissist? Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

Manic? Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and....

Paranoiac? Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

Borderline Personality Disordered? Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Passive-Aggressive? You Better Watch out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why

Social Anxiety Disordered? Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate

And finally, for the Obsessive-Compulsive:
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell, Jingle Bell Rock,
...Better Now, One More Time!

Mom, my job, sick kitty and sick daughter (NOT in any particular order of importance, mind you)

1. Mom. OK, she's high on the list in importance, but the rest are not in order. Mom got to go home Monday night. They did electrical cardioversion right before sending her home and it worked! She awoke feeling noticeably better, something that has not happened before with these, and her heart was in sinus. It still is. Papa said today that he has been checking her pulse and he's never heard it so strong. Thank the Lord.

2. My job. Yesterday I went from hourly training pay to production pay. I'm slow, but I still am beating the training pay rate, so that's good. I have lots of room for improvement. I am really loving this job so far.

3. Sick kitty. It's Briggs. I gave him a feline leukemia vaccine booster and then forgot about it, and a few hours later when he got very lethargic and grumpy, I failed to make the connection. He's normally a very passive cat. No matter what you do to him, his reaction is usually, "OK, whatever. Hey, I think I'll purr." So when he complained at Lil Miss A's hugs and kisses, when he did not stir from his chair and blankie for about 4 hours, when he actually hissed at the dog, I knew something was wrong. I put him on the feather mattress on the daybed for the night and he hadn't budged when we woke up this morning. Barry took him to the vet and was there when they opened their doors. Normal vaccine reaction, as it happens; they gave him a shot of pain relief and sent him home, where he's asleep again.

I feel sorry for these cats because I know so little about cats. I just don't know how to take good care of them. So I make a lot of mistakes. Good thing they are so forgiving.

4. Sick daughter. The little one. Yet another cold. That's the thing about kindergarten: They have diseases nobody has ever seen before. Forget the jungles of Central Africa: I think the next pandemic will come from some kindergarten classroom in the Midwest. Anyway, Lil Miss A missed school yesterday - which most certainly did NOT please her - and coughed. She's better now and I sent her back. I hope that wasn't a mistake.

Weekend with Mama

I spent the weekend up in the Twin Cities, seeing my mother's progress with my own eyes. I am so thankful!

Christmas Tree

This afternoon the children and Barry went to a tree farm to pick up a tree for the church narthex. They wanted a big one. They found it.

As they drove through LaCrosse on their way home, people were staring, taking pictures on their phones, waving, shouting "Hi Clark!" and such.

Brought to you by the letter P

It's P Week in Little Miss A's kindergarten classroom. She brought home a worksheet the other day covered with pictures of objects. She was supposed to cross off everything that did not begin with P, and color everything that did.

She had one marked wrong, and she wasn't happy about it. She hadn't crossed off a P picture, but she hadn't colored it, either.

"But Mom!" she said. "I couldn't color THAT. Penguins are black and white!"

Extubated

A 7:00 a.m. update: Mom was able to be extubated over night and she's talking! Hurray!