Perfect weather

It's 30 degrees out there right now and raining, but that's OK, because we are encased in a thick sheet of ice and the installation is locked down like, well, like Fort Knox ironically enough. Yes, it's cold, and yes, it's crappy, but it's fine by me because nobody expects me to go anywhere or do anything, which leaves me free to get in touch with my inner sloth. It's a good thing I don't have to go anywhere, because my car looks like this:



I found today to be nice and cozy. I felt kind of like Laura Ingalls Wilder in The Long Winter only instead of eating cornmeal mush, I've got Krispie treats, and instead of reading Pilgrim's Progress, I'm watching unlimited episodes of 30 Rock on NetFlix. It's good to be a pioneer in 2009!

This is our fourth winter at Knox, and each year we've watched the weather take a little bit more out of the tree in our neighbors' yard:



We have that tree's bigger brother in our yard, and we pray for his continued good health:

Woo hoo!!!

Fort Knox takes an inordinate amount of pride in how our schools hardly ever close due to the weather. It really bugs Mike and Annabelle that every county around us will shut down or go on a 2-hour delay but not Fort Knox. Well, we are supposed to be facing a pretty big winter storm over the next 24 hours and miracle of miracles, Knox has already declared the schools to be closed tomorrow! I scrapped plans to cook supper tonight and have ordered pizza in celebration.

I'm really not even sure why I am so excited. I was going to get to stay home tomorrow anyway. I am just hard-wired to appreciate an unexpected school closing, I guess.

Here's a cat in a hat to mark this momentous occasion:

New project

Because I don't have enough half-finished projects hanging over my head, I have started a new one. Back when we lived in Hawaii, I was heavily into scrapbooking. I love my albums, but I see the kids returning to my Germany blog to re-live those memories and I thought it might be nice if I could go back in time and blog Hawaii as well.

So I have started my Hawaii blog. It doesn't have a cool name yet or a pretty layout. Mostly I'm just trying to get some content posted, and then I'll mess around with the aesthetics. If you want to check it out, go here.

Looking at my Hawaii photos might just be what gets me through this winter.

Extra, extra, read all about it!

From the front page of the sports section of this week's post newspaper:



I wrote to the photographer, who was kind enough to share the image file with me. I've got it uploaded on my Flickr account if you want a better look.

Tip of the hat to Deana

My friend Deana found the most amazing site: Aretha's Hat is Everywhere. It's a clearinghouse of pictures like this one with Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat added in for an extra touch of style:



Of course I was helpless to resist this temptation. So I put it on one of my ancestors:



On me in Paris:



And on Fred during our honeymoon:



At that point I had killed most of the morning and was itching to try something new. So I made my very first LOLcat:



Somebody stop me before I hat again!

Checking in from youth orchestra

I am taking advantage of the free WiFi here at the community college where Annabelle is attending her weekly youth orchestra rehearsal. I love sitting here listening to them work through their new music. They have a medley of Bugs Bunny classics that I hope they play tonight.

My day was all about meetings. I spent the morning at the high school attending a workshop on college applications. This afternoon I went to the school board meeting. Now I can't wait to get home to my bed. I hope that there are new episodes of The Office and Grey's Anatomy tonight.

Chocolate for supper

Back in the fall when Annabelle signed up for her weekly musical theater class, I envisioned myself spending her class time at the coffee shop that was opening just outside the back gate and just down the road from her dance studio. Each week I would eagerly look for signs of progress, but in classic watched-pot fashion it refused to boil. Well, it is finally open and it offers free WiFi, so I am posting this while I enjoy a cup of hot chocolate and a piece of chocolate-pecan pie. Mmmm . . . free WiFi and chocolate! Two of my favorite things!

Happy Inauguration Day!

Pasta la vista, baby!

Last summer I bought a pasta machine at TJMaxx, and I got a ravioli press for Christmas, but I had never used either one. Mike wanted pasta for dinner tonight as preparation for his swim meet tomorrow, so it seemed like a good excuse to make ravioli. Fred and I worked together and got to be pretty good at rolling out the dough and using the press to fill the pouches and crimp the edges:



Here's the finished product:



It was pretty good, but I used plain ricotta as the filling, and I think next time I would add something to give it a little more zip.

Lazy Sunday

We had a quiet day today. I made muffins for breakfast and then we all went to the pool where Annabelle and I watched Mike teach Fred how to do a flip turn. Quick commissary run, grilled fish for supper . . . nothing terribly exciting. I'm on stripe 28 out of 35 on Fred's scarf and not sure if I'll be able to finish by Tuesday or not. The knitting is one thing, but all that braiding at the end--that seems to take forever!

Tonight was the season premiere of the HBO series Big Love, which is one of my faves. Somehow though my recording of it got messed up, and we missed the last few minutes. So now we're watching an encore performance and waiting to see what we missed.

Everything going swimmingly

This morning was the annual Brown Bear Sprint up at Shawnee High School in Louisville. It was really neat to see how much the entire team has improved. Last year a few swimmers snagged ribbons. This year the girls' team came in fifth overall, and the boys' team came in third:



Here's our coach displaying some of the awards that FKHS swimmers earned this morning:



And here is Mike showing off his medals in the car after the meet:



Two of those medals are for third-place relay finishes, which I didn't record. The other 2 are for second place in the 50-yard breaststroke (33.90 seconds, as opposed to last year's 35.63 seconds):



and for third place in the 100-yard freestyle (1:02):

Off to Louisville

Not much to report from today. I'm waiting for Mike to get home with my car (will I ever get used to saying that?) so I can run up to the airport and pick up Fred. He'll be here until Tuesday night, and we're planning a fairly quiet weekend. Mike has a swim meet tomorrow morning, but we have no big plans beyond that.

Is it too late to convert to the metric system?

Because if we were on the metric system, I might not have been quite so miserable taking this picture on my back porch this morning:

Tell me where to go

Fred had a most excellent idea. This June, between his graduation on the 6th and Mike's American Private Enterprise Youth Program at UK (which starts on the 18th), we want to take the kids on a really awesome family vacation, but we don't know where. That's where you come in.

We don't care anything about nightlife, dancing, or gambling. There MUST be a beach and a really awesome pool. Extra points are awarded for a swim-up bar. It also has to be close enough that travel to and from our vacation won't eat a freakishly large amount of the 5 or 6 days we have free to devote to this. Please send me your suggestions!

This is a really good time for me to be thinking about beautiful, warm vacation destinations. It might distract me from the misery that is our weather forecast:

I've been robbed

Over the holidays, Annabelle showed me the cutest video I've ever seen. Tonight, since I have nothing to blog, I asked her if I could post it. And the little turkey ran to her room and posted it first! Stinker. Oh, well, it's wicked cute, so you should really go check it out.

Do you know the muffin mom?

Most of my previous breadmaking attempts have been failures, but I think I might have finally found my carb medium: muffins! I've made a couple batches of these blueberry muffins in the past week, and the critics have been raving:

Sunday funnies

I have a couple of humorous items to share this weekend. First of all, back when we lived in Germany, we enjoyed watching German TV partly for the ads. There was a series of ads for cell phones or ring tones or some such thing that featured "Crazy Frog," and those clips had a way of worming their way deep into your brain and refusing to leave:



Well, you are never going to believe what my friend Amy found on the streets of Seoul, Korea, and sent to us:



Our Crazy Frog boogies with the best of them when you push the button in his foot:



Thanks, Amy, Phil, and Rebecca! He shall have a place of honor in our home. (That place won't be in Annabelle's room, as she declared, "That thing is not living in my room!" I think the eyes kind of freak her out.)

And in other news, an anonymous source reports a Christmas miracle occurred in our neighborhood. It seems Santa Claus gift-wrapped Canada House:



Of course, Newton teaches us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I'm thinking this means we better keep an eye on the house across the street to see what happens there next.

Progress report

Annabelle continues to recover from her tooth trauma. She is still confining herself mostly to soft foods, with vanilla milkshakes from BK and Lipton noodle soup being the clear favorites. The doctor told her to stay off the bassoon until at least Monday.

Mike had a swim meet today. It was a sprint meet (only short events) up in Louisville. He wasn't very happy with his IM, but he came in 11th overall in the 50-yard breaststroke with a time of 32 seconds and change. Last year at this same meet he came in 23rd with a time of 34.93 seconds.

I knitted my way through the swim meet (think Madame Defarge in a chlorine-scented fog). I'm about a third of the way through Fred's scarf. I would be further along, but I have developed a terrible addiction to spider solitaire that seems to be sucking a lot of my evening hours.

And look! New puppies:

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

Edited to add: Hahahahaha! Victory is mine:

Driving my life away

My hobby lately is driving to Louisville. I went on Monday to make a Whole Foods run. I took Tuesday off but returned on Wednesday for the tooth-pulling. Yesterday I drove up for Wicked. Today I had a hair appointment and a craving for nachos from Qdoba. And tomorrow I'm going up again to watch Mike's swim meet. Then I'm off through most of next week until I take Annabelle for her follow-up appointment on Thursday, get Fred from the airport on Friday, and head out for another swim meet on Saturday. It's a good thing I like my van, 'cause I sure spend enough time in it.

Wicked day

I was a little nervous when we booked Annabelle's tooth pulling for yesterday, because I've had tickets for today's matinee performance of Wicked since sometime in October. I couldn't get a Friday appointment (which was our first choice) though until sometime in March, so we went ahead and did the teeth yesterday. I held my breath and hoped that her positive attitude (she really wanted to get it over with) and some heavy-duty drugs would get her through, and they did!

The show was amazing! I've heard the soundtrack once and had just the slightest familiarity with the plot. So the show was full of surprises for me, which was great. Our seat location could not have been better--row F, smack dab in the center.

We ran by Walmart on our way home to pick up a new antibiotic for Annabelle. The liquid that tasted "like sweat" has been replaced by pills, to her great relief. After I dropped her off at the house, I raced over to the pool for Mike's swim meet. I didn't get any video, and I don't have official stats, but he was very happy. He took almost a full second off his 100-yard breaststroke time! These twice-a-day practices are paying off for him.

Paging the tooth fairy

Today was the big day for Annabelle's teeth! She was a total trouper, but I was a nervous wreck. In less than an hour, however, she was in the recovery room, using her cell phone to type messages for me to read since it was impossible to understand what she was trying to say through the gauze.

I have it on good authority that the lost baby teeth of little girls eventually find their way home in the form of diamonds:



If the tooth fairy knows what's good for her, this is the tooth she'll turn into a rock:



Go here to read about today from Annabelle's point of view and to see more photos.

Future scarf

I gave Fred a box of yarn for Christmas. I'm hoping to turn it into a scarf before he comes home for MLKjr weekend. I need to get busy!

Can you hear me now?

We finally got our new cell phones today. We got 3 Rants--2 red, one black--and they are cute little things. I think for Mike and Annabelle's purposes (talking and texting), they'll be fine. I'm worried I've made a terrible mistake for myself though. I opted to add the data plan to my line so that I could have access to my email and the Internet. I had hoped to be posting this blog entry from my phone, in fact, but it's terribly awkward and frustrating. It is so sleek and simple on my iPod Touch, and I fear I might have been better off ditching Sprint for AT&T and the iPhone. Sigh . . .

Weekend update

Mike had his swim meet yesterday morning, and it went well, especially considering that he still has a pretty wicked cough left over from his Christmas cold. He placed first in his individual events (200 IM and 100 breaststroke) but was disappointed with his times nonetheless.

After the meet, Fred took off (and came back and took off and came back and took off and came back and took off) for his return trip to Carlisle. It sure was nice having him around the past couple of weeks. It was a little sad today, packing away the coffee maker and his mug.

Last night Annabelle had her youth theater pizza party down in E'town. I took my computer and hung out at Panera while she was at her party.

My big accomplishment for today was going to the commissary. Aside from that, I took it pretty easy. I'm trying to make "taking it pretty easy" my new way of life.

A year of books

Once again, I used LibraryThing to keep track of my year's reading. This was the final tally for 2008 (click to see it larger):

We bid you an odd fondue

We finally got our New Year's Eve fondue tonight. We ate ourselves silly, and the kids and I waxed nostalgic about our fondue parties back in Germany with the Mitchells. Ah, good times, good times . . .

Annabelle had her consult with the oral surgeon this afternoon. She'll go back on Wednesday to have the teeth pulled. Her one question for the doctor: "Will I get good pain meds?" That's my girl! (And the answer is "yes.")

We were supposed to get our new cell phones today, but they didn't arrive. I spent an hour doing battle on the phone with Sprint, and all I can say is that if those phones don't get here tomorrow, I'll take it as a sign from the universe that I'm meant to have an iPhone.

We had one last movie night for Fred's final evening at home. Our chosen film: Untergang (Downfall), a German flick I got last Christmas. Kind of hard to follow but very interesting! It was especially amazing to see the kindly grandfather from Vitus transformed into Hitler. Mike, with his knack for concise historical commentary, summed it up perfectly: "Dude, Hitler was such a douchebag!"

Tomorrow morning we'll go to Mike's swim meet and then Fred will take off for his return drive to Pennsylvania.

Happy New Year!

Hard copies should be going out in tomorrow's mail:

"We love our dad!"

I feel like the final post of Blog 365 should be some sort of deep look at the past year, but eh, that's what the archives are for. Instead, here's a picture I just took of Ginger and Eddie engaging in a little Fred-worship:



We were supposed to be having fondue for supper tonight, but neither the commissary nor Walmart had any French bread. So instead we're going to go out to Jailhouse Pizza in Brandenburg. The fondue will have to wait until Friday (dinner out with friends tomorrow).

I remember spending a New Year's Eve with my Grandma Jernigan when I was a kid. She took a bath around 8 that night and announced, "I'm not taking another bath until next year!" That totally cracked me up and has obviously stuck with me. In that spirit, this is the last you'll hear from me until next year!

Spent the day in Bowling Green

Fred and I journeyed down to Bowling Green today to watch a swim meet. This was the same meet where I last year took this amazing picture, thinking the swimmer was Annabelle (it wasn't):



Today we had more user-related camera problems. Fred agreed to shoot for me since my hands were especially shaky today, but I forgot to tell him that you shouldn't rotate the camera if you're shooting in video mode. I've figured out how to fix the file for playback on my computer, but when I upload it to YouTube it reverts back to sideways. So if you're eager to watch the 200-yard IM, rest your head on your own shoulder and check it out (with a time of 2:39.36, he placed 5th overall in the event):



My shaky hands and I took over for filming the 100-yard breaststroke, but for some reason stupid YouTube is taking its stupid time "processing" the file. Grrrrr! Oh, well, I'll add it on once it's available, but that might be sometime tomorrow. He finished sixth overall in the event with a time of 1:15.63, a .7-second improvement over his previous best time just .7 seconds over his best time.

Edited to add: It's finally finished!

Tooth story

Annabelle went to the dentist today to have 8 teeth pulled. So watch this and then head over to her blog for the details:

Another traveling coat

When my cousin Julie and I were in Europe back in college, we each had a coat. I bought mine at home before I left Florida, and the poor thing was pretty but just wasn't a match against the German winter. Julie, on the other hand, bought hers in France--a glorious men's wool overcoat, made in England and toasty warm. When the course of our lives led Julie to south Florida and me to chillier climates, we swapped coats. I am always grateful for its stylish warmth (after all these years, I guess it's "vintage"), and I make it a point to tell Julie where her coat has been. (She was especially honored recently to realize that her coat had been photographed with the Naked Cowboy in Times Square.)

When I think of Julie and the coat, I always think of one particular photo. I took this of her outside a hotel in Amsterdam:



When Fred and I (and the coat) went to NYC last month, I had to get my own lion picture:



That coat has a lot of miles on it!

A perfect winter day

Today was lovely. Sure, it was cloudy. Sure, it was a little windy. But the high was almost SEVENTY DEGREES! I was in heaven.

It's short lived though. Tomorrow's high is going to be 45, which is going to feel even worse than usual after spending today in such glorious warmth.

The strange story of Bruce and Kevin

Once upon a time, a nice Australian couple in Pennsylvania had a nice couple of light-up reindeer on their front lawn for Christmas. Their names (the reindeer's, not the Australians') were Bruce and Kevin. One evening the nice Australian couple arrived home to find Bruce and Kevin duct-taped in a . . . um . . . compromising position. They assumed that the trickery had been committed by their seminar mates, but the same thing happened the next night when said seminar mates were all at a party. Very mysterious . . .

(I've seen the photos, and they are hysterical, but alas, I don't have copies of them. So you'll just have to take my word for it.)

Anyway, on the THIRD night, everybody was at another holiday party, and this time there was a "Dirty Santa" game, where you get to steal other people's presents. For quite a while, I had a 2008 White House ornament in my hands, but then it got stolen back away from me. So Fred had to make a choice: would he take the light-up Hulk mask? the Mexican baseball cap and wallet? perhaps the Army tie? No, he zeroed in on the box labeled "Bruce's Cousin from Down Under."

We brought the cousin home to Kentucky, but he looked lonely all by himself in our yard, so Fred went out and bought him a family. And now we have a small herd in our front yard, but they don't have names. So if you have any suggestions, leave a comment.

The Australian cousin is the little one in the middle:

Merry Christmas!

Normally I would post a scan of our Christmas card here to wish everybody a very merry Christmas, but we're doing New Year's cards this year, and they're still at Walgreens. So instead I will share the one and only photo I took today:



We had a nice, relaxing day that didn't even get started until well after 9. The kids emptied out their stockings and then Fred made blueberry pancakes for breakfast. After breakfast we opened presents, and then Fred, Mike, and I watched Mike's DVD of Anchorman while Annabelle arranged her new loot in her room. We had our big meal around 4, and we're going to spend the evening watching more movies.

I hope your Christmas has been just as relaxing!

Fa la la la la

We are officially ready for Christmas, right down to the stockings. This has to be some sort of record for us, as usually Fred and I are wrapping well into the night on Christmas Eve.

We just got back from caroling. My friend Laura organized a serenade for a friend and neighbor of ours who is facing some pretty serious and scary health problems. I was worried that with it being Christmas Eve, we might have a small turnout. But there were at least 25 people there, and our music was well received. It felt good to be part of such a friendly, caring group!

It's a valuable prize!

My sister won a $50 Panera gift card in an ugly Christmas sweater contest! Here she is modeling the garment:



Fifty bucks at Panera beats a leg lamp any day!

Something about a man in uniform

I can't resist one:



Never could:

The long and winding (and windy) road

Nothing of substance to report today. Fred and I spent 10 and a half hours driving back from PA. All in all the weather was better than it could have been, but it was so WINDY!

We looked for a Starbucks for 377 miles before giving up and stopping at a Steak-n-Shake for milkshakes. Next exit? Yep, Starbucks.

Party report

Well, I was totally wrong about the sort of formal we were going to last night. I thought it was going to be one of those nights where you dress up pretty and have a receiving line and the whole "gentlemen, seat your ladies" thing and a million toasts and a speaker. I was right as far as "dress up pretty," but after that it diverged. This was a PARTY! No receiving line, no toasts, no boring speaker.

My first clue that things were going to be different was that each table had a marshmallow gun and a baggie of ammunition. You would think that anybody mature enough to be admitted to something as lofty as the War College would be way too mature to blow marshmallows at each other from across the room, right? Well, you would be wrong:







At the end of the evening, the DJ played "Freebird," sparking a wave of nostalgia for Fred and his friend Al:



We had a great time, and now we're off to another party, this one just for Fred's seminar group. Something tells me I don't need to worry about receiving lines or boring speakers at this party either.

Better do this now

Greetings from Pennsylvania! My flight was uneventful, and there was a rather festive air at the Louisville airport, as it was crawling with basic trainees on their way home on block leave. When the plane arrived at BWI, the flight attendant asked for a round of applause for the 20 or so on our flight, and then we all stayed seated and let them get off first. I thought that was nice.

Fred and I are getting ready to go over to Carlisle Barracks for the formal. I thought I better go ahead and blog now in case we're after midnight getting home.

Ready as I'm gonna be

This always happens to me when I'm getting ready to go out of town. I run out of time and energy long before I run out of stuff to do. I hit that point about an hour ago.

Fortunately I have all the big stuff done. I am, for example, packed. But I was hoping to update the Quicken and get our Christmas cards in the mail, neither of which are going to happen this week. Quicken will still be here when I get back, and I had the brilliant (to me) idea that this year we will be sending New Year's cards instead. Clever, eh? That just bought me an extra week. Oh, and the vacuuming of the upstairs that I meant to do before my mom got here (on the 3rd of December) but that I never got around to? Yeah, not happening either.

In other news, Mike left this evening to visit a friend in California for a few days. He just called a little while ago from the Minneapolis airport with the shocking report that it is "cold like I have never felt cold before." Cold in Minneapolis? In December? Really?!

After we dropped Mike at the airport, Annabelle and I had to hustle ourselves down to E'town for her final holiday performance with the youth orchestra. They did their show at the food court at the mall, and it really sounded great! It's been a busy few weeks of various rehearsals and performances, and now they are all over. It's been fun, but it'll be nice to take a rest!

Call me Zippy

I did it! I faced the invisible zipper, and I won. I got the zipper in yesterday, and then today I had to do the facing and the hem. Oddly enough it was the hem that wound up really intimidating me. I decided that the skirt's lower-knee length was just a touch frumpy so I wanted to make it shorter, but the thought of cutting into the fabric when it was SO close to finished just terrified me. So I channeled my cousin Julie, who is the bravest seamstress I know, and set to work, and it all turned out great.

Here, I'll give you a peek if you promise to act like you're seeing it for the first time when I post pictures from the formal. Also, please pretend that I am wearing sheer black hose and fresh makeup:



Edited to add: I forgot to give a shout out to this tutorial for walking me through invisible zipper land! I don't think I would have ever figured out how to use the stupid zipper foot without it.

Ice dance

What's missing from this list?



I'll give you a hint. It starts with an F and ends with an O-R-T-K-N-O-X.

All counties surrounding us are closed. Jefferson County (Louisville) schools are open, but on the news they keep saying, "Well, we (meaning Louisville) got off easy, but south of us (meaning areas like Fort Knox) is a whole 'nother story!" And our forecast is for wintry mix in the morning, changing to freezing rain in the afternoon, so it's not like things are going to improve throughout the day.

Mike is incensed. On the off-chance that they would close school today, the high school compressed today's finals reviews with yesterday's. That means Mike's review for AP US History got condensed to a half-hour for nothing, and he's really nervous about that exam.

I don't know why I feel so disappointed. It really doesn't change MY day. I still get to stay home and refuse to go out. I love being snowbound with the kids though and feel bad for them that they have trudge off to school. And I feel especially bad for the faculty and staff who have to make their way here from Louisville and E'town!

Skirting the issue

When we first got the word about the upcoming deployment, I seriously considered changing my plans for going to Carlisle next weekend to attend the formal. Frankly I wasn't in much of a mood for fun of any sort and ESPECIALLY Army fun. Eventually I decided that I wasn't going for the Army; I was going for me and for Fred, so I got over myself and started hunting in my closet for something to wear.

I ultimately decided that in order to maximize warmth, I would wear my black velvet jacket that I bought a couple years ago, but I didn't really care for any of my skirts that go with it. They were all too church-dressy, as opposed to party-dressy. I could have gone out shopping for a skirt, but instead I opted to make one.

I am making this pattern (but the knee-length version):



Out of this fabric:



So far, so good. Mom and I cut it out together while she was up here, and today I started sewing. I have the front and back sewn together at one side, and all that remains is to put in the invisible zipper, finish that side seam, put in the facing, and do the hem. I'm nervous about the zipper though. I don't think I've ever done an invisible one, and I had to buy this little set of special feet for the sewing machine, which makes me think it might be some sort of Big Deal.

I think I am going to stop for the night while I am ahead and face the zipper in the morning.

Sh! Do you hear that?

There's a box of Cinnabons on my kitchen counter, and I think they are calling my name. Must. Be. Strong.

Nightcap

I got together with a couple of friends tonight for wine, munchies, and fun conversation. We had a great time! I need to do stuff like that more often.

Mom left this morning, which was a bummer. Annabelle went with us to the airport, and then she and I went shopping (the mall was just normal Saturday morning crowded as opposed to a week and a half before Christmas crowded, which was nice), had lunch, and got our hair cut.

I have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow but nothing that has to be done at any particular time. I'm hoping to sleep until 9.

Space case?

My dad has been getting some cool night sky photos lately! The other day he sent me this one, which is Jupiter, Venus, and the moon:



And then tonight he sent me this one, which is the moon at its closest orbital point to Earth:



I'm impressed!

Strangest dream last night

It's kind of a running joke between Fred and me that I always have the most bizarre dreams, and the next morning I always say, "I had the strangest dream last night." But last night I really did!

I dreamed that I decided my fingers were too long, so I took a guillotine-style nail trimmer like you might use on a large dog's claws, and I snipped off the tip of each finger on my left hand. Then I thought, "Well, that was a stupid thing to do," and I gathered up the pieces and took them to the doctor, who glued them back on.

When I say I had the strangest dream last night, I speak the truth.

Where did today go?

Today has been a blur. Mom and I spent most of the school day down in E'town, doing some Christmas shopping and having lunch. I have introduced Mom to the wonders of Panera, and she seems to like it a lot. Which is good, as we will most likely be eating lunch there again tomorrow.

When we got home in the afternoon, I went into full-on chauffeur mode. 3:15--take Mike to swim practice. 4:30--take Annabelle to musical theater class. 4:45--pick Mike up from swim practice. 6:15--pick Annabelle up from musical theater class. Then I had a swim boosters meeting at 7:00, and somewhere in all that, Mom made supper. We had Laredo, which is basically just chili with cheese, but hers is the best. It's what I always request when I go home to Florida, so it's nice to get to enjoy it up here as well. Especially in this ICKY weather!

Progress

Well, I managed to tell 2 friends our news today without crying, which is an improvement over yesterday. In fact, I haven't cried at all today.

This may sound crazy, but I blame a paint chip for our current troubles. Back at the beginning of the school year when we thought we would be staying here through 2010, I had a wild desire to paint my bathroom. So I went to Lowe's and picked out some paint chips and taped the best one to the bathroom wall so that I could live with it for a while and see how I liked it. When they first said Germany to us, I decided that there was no point in painting if we were just going to be moving out in a matter of months, but I still left the chip on the wall . . . until this week when I threw it away. I threw it away, and the next thing you know Germany is off the table and Fred is headed for another deployment.

I'm going to stop by Lowe's tomorrow and get another paint chip. And once I've ascertained that it's the right color, I'm buying paint, and I'm painting the bathroom. I might just paint the whole stupid house while I'm at it.

Stress code

While we have been reasonably satisfied with the schools here on post, there is one aspect that has been a constant source of frustration for the past 3+ years: the dress code. It's crazy! It's huge and unwieldy and full of bizarre rules, such as no capris for girls and turtleneck shirts only if worn under a school-approved sweater or sweatshirt. Why, why, why?! There's also laughable language such as, "Authorized school logos and naturally occurring logos found on some apparel such as Polo, Tommy Hilfiger, etc., are permitted provided the logo is no larger than 2 inches square." Naturally occurring logos? Are you kidding me?! It is a nightmare trying to find clothes that fit the code and that kids want to wear.

It looks like this year something might finally be done about this Frankenregulation (at 3.5 pages, compared to other schools' 1 or 2-page codes, it is indeed a monster). Tonight they held a meeting to get parent input. I had planned on going anyway even though up until Friday (sob!), I didn't think I'd have a dog in that fight as of next year. Now that my dogs and I will still be here, I was extra-enthusiastic about putting in my 2 cents.

I had to leave the meeting a little before the end to make it to the high-school band concert. Annabelle had told me to feel free to miss the concert in order to fight the code, but I didn't want to do that! The concert was great, and I think I got some good video. I'll try to get it uploaded soon.

If you want to look at the dress code for yourself, you can check it out here on the middle school's website.

Everybody shops at Walmart

Eyewitless traffic report

Mom and I drove up to Louisville this morning to watch Mike's swim meet and then to take him to get a haircut. The meet was great! Mike dropped his time in his 100 freestyle to 1 minute 1 second--this was without starting blocks, so with blocks he could probably shave that down a bit more.

When we came out of the meet, the weather had turned icky, and it was doing some weird combination of light snow, sleet, and freezing rain. Not my kind of weather at all but not nearly bad enough to account for the carnage we witnessed as we drove across town. EVERY overpass had at least one wreck. We estimate that we saw between 15 and 20 wrecks, with one truck being entirely upside down and one car being completely burnt out inside. People, when they say that the bridge ices before the road, THEY ARE NOT KIDDING!

I read online that in a 2-hour time period, there were 62 injury accidents and 123 non-injury accidents. That is just crazy!

Unbelievable

I've been looking forward to writing tonight's post for a really long time, since mid-October, I guess. I had a title picked out for it, and it was going to be called: "This blog is about to get a lot more exciting." And it was going to say, "Today Fred finally got the call about his assignment for next year, and we're going back to Germany! We've known about it for several weeks, and it has looked more and more certain as time has gone by, but I just didn't want to risk jinxing it by putting it on the blog." Well, fat fucking lot of good that did.

Instead you can see the title of the post for yourself and instead it goes like this:

Fred finally got the call about his assignment for next year, and he's deploying to Afghanistan. The kids and I will stay here. We're all pretty much devastated.

It's going to take a while to process this. I will say though that I have gone from the stunned phase to pissed off remarkably quickly.

Wake me up in 18 months.

Annabelle and Big Red

Tonight was the Christmas performance for the youth orchestra and the ECTC choir. You will have to believe me when I say it was fantastic! I took the video camera and even went to the trouble of purchasing a new tape. But it quickly became apparent that with the audience and the orchestra all sitting on the same level and with Annabelle tucked away towards the back with the rest of her bass buddies that the tape was not going to show anything except a lot of heads and music stands and some violin bows sweeping up and down. Fortunately the county school system had a professional there recording the whole thing, and I got the phone number. I'm going to call tomorrow and order their DVD and when I get it, I'll share highlights.

In the meantime here's a still photo for you:

I want my mommy!

So I'm going to go up to Louisville and pick her up from the airport. :-D

Can I do it?

I have one paper standing between me and the end of the semester. It's technically due by midnight on Friday, but I just want it DONE, the sooner the better. I've finished up all my research and sat down at 8:00 to knock it out. My goal is to be finished by midnight. Here it is already 10:15 though, and I'm just finishing up page 3 (out of 8). Stand by for updates . . .

Oh, before I forget! Go check out Annabelle's post from today. It's a supercute song parody that she did for a school assignment. I'd like it noted for the record that I did too know what "demur" meant--I just didn't understand her use of it in the song when she was singing it for me.

Update: I hear the 11:00 bugle, and I am just at the top of page 5. Midnight is looking less and less likely as a goal.

Update: 11:22, and I just finished page 5. I skipped ahead and wrote the third section of the paper before writing the second. Right now I'm trying to decide between writing the conclusion and skipping back to section 2.

Update: 11:47, and I'm just hitting the bottom of page 6. So yeah, midnight isn't going to work.

Update: 12:21, and I have a half dozen lines to go before reaching my required 8 pages. Fortunately (?) I still have my conclusion left to write, and it should be good for at least that much space. I'm beat and am going to head for bed. Even if I could knock it out right now, it would probably not be a good idea for me to submit it without taking another look at it with fresher eyes tomorrow. Oh, well, I'm satisfied. It's almost over.

The one that got away

Today was colder than a well-digger's monkey or something like that. I got home from my doings in Louisville, and the sky opened up, shooting forth a torrent of snow just as I needed to take the dog out. I decided no way was I going to go out in that mess with her, so I was just going to stand inside the front door and let her run out on the flexi-leash to take care of her business.

Anyway, as I opened the door, I was greeted by a sight of unspeakable cuteness. A SQUIRREL was sitting on the pumpkin that I just haven't gotten around to pitching yet, and he was eating it. I shut the door and ran upstairs for my camera, and when I got back he was STILL there (greedy little bugger), but I only got to fire off one shot before he took off. And that one shot was horribly, awfully, terribly out of focus:



Does that not suck? Would that not have been such a great picture? I haven't been this bummed photographically speaking since I took that awesome picture of a swimmer who turned out NOT to be my daughter.

Victory will be mine! I will leave that pumpkin there until next Christmas if I have to. He has to come back. And when he does, I'll be waiting for him . . .

Edited to add: My dad said this in the comments to this post: "You can't fool me. That front-porch 'photo' is of the famous Monet painting 'le petit rodent mange sur le grand jacques au laterne.' (I saw the original hangin' in the Loover!)"

Sorry, Dad, but you are mistaken. I believe this is the famous Monet painting to which you are referring:



They are admittedly very similar. It's an easy mistake to make.

Doubleknit

I have knitted a cheeseload of socks in the past few years, and with one exception I always come back to my same old reliable pattern. This time, however, I wanted to shake things up a little bit, so I am still using Old Reliable BUT I am knitting both socks at once as outlined here:



I'm hoping this will prevent Second Sock Syndrome, that dreaded condition in which you have completed one sock and can't think of anything you'd rather do less than knit the second sock.

Oh, and did I mention that I finished my green sweater in time for my NYC trip? I'm really happy with how it turned out: