Spread

Mistargeted, kind of.

I won't even let myself go of on the privacy issues involved here, but according to my settings (if you click there, does it take you to your own Google settings?), Google thinks I'm a 25-34-year-old man, interested in brain teasers, cats, San Francisco, and reality TV. A little hit or miss there. Sure, I'm all about the puzzles, and if you post a funny kitten picture on my Facebook, I'll be happy for hours, but I don't google "cats" ever. (Oh, wait, maybe when mine get sprayed by skunks and I forget the best formula to clean them up.) And then I think, what kind of 25-year-old man is interested in brain teasers and cats and The Bachelor? I have never met that guy. Let alone been him.

Someplace special indeed.

Attending the launch panel of the U.P. Book Tour last night made me feel all dreamy and grateful about where I live, but then today's headline on the TV6 page sealed the deal: "Huge Jet to Land in U.P." (Some 747 is stopping at Sawyer to refuel on its way to California this afternoon.) I love that this is our news.

Messy.

If it's Labor Day weekend, it must be Big Bay Mud Drags time. The sign I just passed by the Wright Place noted that the event is also hosting a Bikini Dash for Cash. And today is so cold out.

But still, I'm sure I'll spend the rest of the day wishing I could go back in time five years and be on my way up there in the back of a pickup. That was a good weekend: vodka sauce and bonfires and horseshoes at The Lumberjack. Instead, in my life's present moment, I'll be putting together this big thing for school, this document that could mean a certain amount of job security, a new and continuing status there. Though who's to say I won't start a little fire in the backyard as well. I still have giant marshmallows left over from summer.

He did acknowledge it was a Gumby toe now.

So, if you go to the doctor because of a funny, bothersome (but not painful) feeling in – or just a certain awareness of – a mangled toe that you broke two years ago, and instead of any medical suggestions he lends you a (supposedly) funny book entitled The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You, you can be pretty certain that in the diagnosis field of the chart, the word you can't quite make out on the way to the billing desk is "crazypants." Right?

On the bright side, if I ever get off my crazypants and put together a collection of short-short fiction, I've got my title.

Remember RedPop?

Is it weird I'm considering buying a seltzer-making machine? I go through so many cans of what Noni calls "water-pop," I'm thinking it might be more efficient (and fun!) just to make my own. Does anybody have any experience with them? I don't think I need anything fancy, and I'm not so interested in making my own diet Coke or Faygo or anything. I just want to fizz up my water. Is it reasonable to choose something like this over a microwave to take up my limited counter space?

Bullets.

I'm a sucker for a list. I open my Yahoo home page in the morning and scroll through all my news/blog/site headlines, and if there's a number in it, I click on it, even if it's in no way relevant to me. Yesterday, ten things to keep in mind when buying a house. I'm not buying a house. Today, nineteen things never to say to single people and ten things airlines don't tell you. The other day, fifty tips from real dentists (though I did learn they were a big fan of xylitol, so maybe that one's not so bad). Five worst comic book sidekicks ever, six insider Disneyland secrets, seven things never to say in a job interview, ten worst NFL draft picks in history. And I'm pretty sure it's the number that does it. If it were just an article on "how to be smart when you buy a house," I wouldn't even have looked twice.

What is that about? How does the Internet know my weaknesses?

Whatever the case, I have a list fetish for my own days as well. The term wraps up this weekend (I get the last of my revisions today), but I've taken on some more editorial and scoring work, so I better go get to it. Number one, as frog and toad taught us: make list.

It’s not just me.

While I've grown into tolerating cilantro, it's nice to know I'm not alone in finding its flavor a little unnatural. I say metallic, they say soapy or buggy, but it's all not food.

How about a flyer instead?

Sometimes I wonder about the news sources on my home page. Today's top story: "Sandra Bullock and Jesse James' dog is missing again."

I’ll write home every day.

Oh dear. I'm on the couch with and blanket and my computer on my lap, and my arms are cold. I think I would have just invented the Snuggie.

I think I caught my nieces' colds. Feel all drowsy and snotty, and I let my second class out early, but I'm heading out to learn how to play the ukulele anyway, so I can do this.

See you there, Peter.

Don’t wink at me.

The personals ad thing is tough. Not letters like the last one I posted, which are easy to ignore, but the nice notes, the ones that are polite and sweet but just don't get me going. It's okay to just not write back, right?

And why does everybody seem so old? Just this morning I got a response from a 51-year-old farmer, and at first I was like, dude, I'm too young for you. But how is it that I've travelled so far into the future that a 51-year-old really isn't too old for me? (And besides, my ex-husband just turned 60 last week, so I really have no ground to stand on at all.) My mom told me – only half-joking, I think – to make sure my next husband is younger than me. Looking at my Group girls as examples, this seems not bad advice. Geez, not that I have room for a husband here. Where would the cats sit?

(P.S. Peter's last comment is Spread's 2000^th comment! Thanks for reading, really.)

Not to mention your real weight on the chart.

Blah, blah, transference, my doctor is so cute. But it's hard to flirt with someone who's writing you a script for anti-anxiety meds.

Ten to two.

When I was four, my family took a road trip to Alaska. I think of this sometimes when things seem impossible. If my parents could drive from the UP to Alaska in a VW bus, a good stretch of that on a dirt highway, with a four-year-old and a nine-month-old baby, then why can't I make it to the post office?

Somewhere along the way was my birthday. They gave me a Mickey Mouse watch, white gloves pointing to the minute and hour. I remember this watch, and actually held onto for a good number of years. But my dad tells me that later that day, I handed it back to him. I was tired of telling time.

Things and links.

Both my popcorn popper and my coffeemaker are about to die. I can tell. That's my favorite food and my favorite drink. I can't even imagine how horrible the day they both go will be. Thank god Walmart's open 24 hours.

But there's good stuff too. I've got all my syllabi ready for Monday, and I'm actually jazzed about my creative nonfiction class. They're going to be writing what I'm going to call "project blogs." The kind of blog that could grow into a book, is the idea, like The Happiness Project or My Year of Living Oprah or Julie and Julia. I want to do one with them, but I don't know what my project should be. Little Sweet says a jigsaw puzzle blog, but I can't imagine even reading such a thing. If you know what my project should be, post it in the comments.

And this book. She's one of my editorial clients, and it's the first time one of my projects has gone to print. I'm so excited for her. Check it out. (You can't "see inside" yet, but I'm sure I'll post again when she gets her website going.)

And the new issue of Diagram is out. Long-time readers will remember a million years ago, when I posted illustrations from How to Make a Man Fall in Love with you. If I'd been smart, I'd have sent the whole book in to them. Somebody did, and the drawings still make me laugh. Both the issue cover page and this one.

Retweet, kind of.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to find the plow had hit my trash and recycling and thrown them both into the snow. I had to go out there in the dark and freezing to gather up paper and tuna cans. And then TV6 had no sound for over an hour. It was all weird and annoying. But this morning is already better. I discovered that Vicky Crystal twitters, so next time I'm at Target and she's my checker, I'm ready to do my biggest-fan thing. Although I'm not sure twittering is the best idea for a newswoman. Today, she posted that a Temple University study found that drinking coffee after alcohol doesn't sober a person up so much as create an "awake drunk." Added at the end of her tweet: "Good to know." I'm not sure that kind of commentary is appropriate unless you're playing off the weatherman next to you.

Okay, I've been working on this couch for a week, but today I'm heading out to run some errands: library, school to do some Passages work, shopping for new glasses, a hair cut. My computer says it's -6 degrees out, so maybe I'll wait a bit to get going.

Is it me?

Besides keep a paper gradebook, here are some things I still do that nobody else seems to do anymore.

1. Turn my wheels toward the curb when I park on a hill. I grew up in Escanaba, which is flatland, so I never thought about this much when I was first learning to drive (to park). But now I live in a hilly town, and I have to think each time about which way to turn the wheel, depending on whether I'm faced up- or downhill. But then I get out and go wherever and see that every other car's wheels are straight. Once, when I was 16, I left my Mazda GLC in my friend Wendy's driveway, and we came out to find it had rolled out into the street. She lived on a dead-end road, and the car was just sitting there patiently, not having smacked into anything or anything, but still: panic. I feel like this is one of those situations where some guy would tell me that back in the day we had to do that but the technology is such that now we don't have to, for blahdeblady reasons. But still, the picture of my little brown hatchback sitting crosswise and empty in the middle of south 20^th street comes to me every single time.

2. Turn on my porchlight at night, and not just when I've ordered pizza or if someone's coming over. I feel like when I was little, you left your porchlight on not just for yourself but for the neighborhood. So kids walking around saw that people were still up. Or so they had light, or so they knew people were watching, or that there was a safe space if they needed it. I have no idea just what the light was supposed to signal, but it went on at dusk and off when you went to bed, which again was probably some sort of signal: people are in bed now. Granted, I don't even have sidewalks here in Trowbridge. But I still like the light on in the evening, and I like brushing my teeth and then turning it off.

I'm sure there's more. I'm sure there's way more.

Weather Rorschach.

I was a couple days early on the blizzard preparations, but I'm glad I made them. Today's a snowday. Neighbor Kid shoveled my porch this morning ("I'm a nice kid," he said. "It doesn't take people too long to realize that"), but you'd never know it now. The season's first radar pic:

Honestly, it doesn't affect my day too much, since I just planned on grading and eating chili anyway. So back to that.

#whatever.

Okay, so I investigated Twitter. It's stupid. Since I don't know anyone besides my dad who tweets (let me know if you do), I added other people – Chad Ochocinco, Audrina Patridge, Rainn Wilson, Margaret Atwood, Daniel Negreanu. But I don't care who's having Korean barbeque or who just woke up. I just don't.

Love snack.

No pressure.

What, you say? Spread doesn't accept advertising! True enough, but here is a link to a fundraiser Little Sweet's school is doing. Maybe you're in the market for wrapping paper or chocolate anyway. (The link contains LS's info, so she gets points or whatnot for the sale.) Know right away there are no t-shirts with clinging kittens. For that you'll have to get in touch with Neighbor Kid.

To have sex in the rain without complaining.

I don't usually post links here, but check out this article on English beauty. I realize it doesn't apply to me, being neither French nor British except in ancestry, but I feel like something similar could be said about girls from the UP, the Midwest – some place I *do* belong to. And plus, it's just wonderfully written (if a little much, at times (I forgive it)). I need to check out more by this guy.

Plus, happy Sunday. The PLK is up against Peter's Pency Goats, and today's the day he learns that Philly's D won't score 35 points every game. No sir.

At odds.

Little Sweet wants another cat, and I want to eventually have a romantic relationship with a man, and I don't see how these two things can both happen. So to compromise, we started volunteering at the Humane Society. What a good gig. We get to socialize the cats categorized as the most friendly, and walk a dog when we want. That's all she really wanted anyway, to spread the love, and I like getting to use "socialize" as a transitive verb.

Read by.

Remember my voiceover narration I did I while back? Well, I finally saw a draft of the video. The seeing it – who cares: people in kayaks, waves tumbling to shore, all very pretty. But hearing it? What an odd feeling. My voice sounds all high and girlish. But the powers that be said I talked too fast sometimes, and I think my r's were a little Yooper, so we have revisions to make tomorrow. Oh dear. I just hope I don't have to start all over and make my way through the awkwardness again. Though that's probably a lot to hope for, to be comfortable.

I thought this thing would be playing on high TVs by this point, that my new audio career would be in the works, but so much for the summer of '09, it appears.

Little updates.

- A picture of the back room, my little nook.

- Seltzer and club soda do taste different. The club soda has a slight baking soda taste. I think I preferred the seltzer.

- I fixed my hair. Now it's all Dark Spice. It's still not all the same color, but at least it doesn't have an orange racing stripe down the part.

- My wheelbarrow looks like a shield carried into the Crusades. Coolest wheelbarrow in the neighborhood.

Amber tortoise.

I messed up my hair. I inadvertently dyed it orange. It matches the fat cat.

Well, most of the hair looks kind of cool – coppery brown. But the two inches of roots and my bangs, that's where the orange is. What on earth happened? I actually think that my new grey hair is taking the color differently than the old hair; there's definite borderline. And how do you cover just the very top of your head until you figure out how to fix such a thing? Right now I've got a thick headband, which hides the worst of it, and maybe I can hope it just looks like the sun's shining hard on the tippy top of my head. Not that it's sunny. I wish I had more summer hats. I actually wore a chook yesterday when I ran some errands, but it was also like 50 degrees out, so I think I got away with it.

Thankfully, tonight I'm going to a mandolin/accordion concert with my dad, so 1) he won't care, and 2) it'll be dark in there.

Nary a drop.

I always thought seltzer and club soda were the same thing. Whenever Sparky orders seltzer and the bartender looks confused, she says, "club soda" and then he gets it. Maybe, I figured, it was a regional thing, like subs and hoagies, soda and pop, because I only see club soda in the stores, never seltzer. I'm really big on Mendota lemon-flavored "sparkling water," which I guessed was the same stuff too. But today at the grocery store, I found Super Chill brand one-liter bottles of seltzer and club soda next to each other on the shelf, and I bought one of each so I can perform a taste test. Do you think they'll be different? The ingredients of the seltzer: carbonated water. The ingredients on the club soda: carbonated water, potassium bicarbonate, potassium citrate. What will that mean in terms of taste?

But it seems like a silly thing to do alone. I want somebody else here I can blindfold and hand a Dixie cup of one then the next. I want it to be formal.

My girl is a tween?

A Happy 11^th Birthday to Little Sweet. She won't read this till after we celebrate together, so I can show you all her present: a Buddha Board. You paint with water on a piece of slate, which darkens when wet, and as the water dries, the marks slowly disappear. It's the closest thing you'll get to meditation. I hope when it's your birthday, someone gets you one.

TV lady.

Yesterday, I went to Target for cat food and sunscreen, and guess who was working the register? Our beloved TV6 morning anchor Vicky Crystal. She had her hair in a ponytail and glasses, but her voice sounded so familiar. It took me a sec to register where I knew her from.

Tell me, how is anchoring the local morning news *not* a full-time job? She isn't paid enough to not have to moonlight in retail? This bothers me. Does Greg Trick wait tables at Red Lobster? Did Karl Bonhak write his weather book because he needed the cash? Is Mike Ludlum reffing high school basketball games on the side? I mean, sure, "Petunia Pandemonium" and "Longtime Boy Scout Retires" might not be big news, but they're our news.

Anyway, the house is coming along. I'm kind of going kooky: Pier One had pillows on clearance. Decorative pillows. Silly, little, pretty pillows, and I love them. And a funky brushed-steel floor lamp, also on clearance. My chalkboard pictures are assembled and ready to hang.

Okay, I really do have work to do. I've got 500 pages of annotating to get done by Thursday, before I pick up my girl and we head to Florida. Must get to it…

And I can’t get up.

The sun is finally out this morning, after two days of rain. That's good because I want to do some spray painting outside. I bought three giant paintings, which I'm going to transform into chalkboards so Little Sweet can keep the art in here current. The tricky thing is that I've had a sore lower back for the past two days, and it's still all hurty. I'm wearing this strip of gauze with heated pads tucked into the pockets, but without much relief. It's not debilitating so much as just annoying, but what really stings is that it seems like such an old person ailment. That, combined with an upcoming birthday and the fact that I let my roots grow out long enough to discover I actually do have grey hairs coming in – well, criminy. Soon, I'll be holding a menu out at arm's length, looking down my nose at it, and tsking after kids using swear words in the mall. Gr.

So I'll do what I can do: dye my hair (vanilla malt), stretch out my back. Just keep going, I guess.

Do I lie like a loungeroom lizard.

Did I say 77? Yesterday, it hit 90 degrees here. Miserable: broiling hot and crazy windy. There are wildfires to the west. I'm worried about John's yurt.

But I did finish painting anyway. This morning it's raining, and cool, and I feel much more human. In fact, there are severe thunderstorm warnings. I read recently they redefined "severe thunderstorm" because none of us were really frightened by the warning. But geesh – on one website they're saying hail and winds of 60 mph. Gather your cats. But another site says scattered showers. Which is it? Honestly, I don't know why we don't bet on the weather. Meteorologists could set odds on the rain, the temperature over/under, we could bet on the next city to experience a natural disaster or the city with the greatest snowfall at the end of the season. Maybe that's my calling: weather bookie.

Birdbath.

I thought I was kidding about the snow. I thought the weather girl was crying wolf, or referring to some tall mountain not on my block. But there were some flakes coming down on my drive to the hardware store. Now I'm thinking gray for the living room. Rope is my favorite, although Gray Ghost isn't bad. I'm trying really, really hard not to choose the same color as my bedroom and Little Sweet's.Today, I go after the crack in the wall. Wish me luck. So far all I've done is make it worse.

Neighbor kid just came by to take the cats out, but it's freezing and crazy windy! Check out the radar. There's something wicked coming straight this way from Wisconsin. Or maybe we shot something thataway. I'm not sure.

Update: There were more than a few flakes. And then, tiny hail, but not the surprising fun summer anomaly kind. This hail fit right in.

TV6 morning news, the highs and lows.

Vicky Crystal just called it "TV Sex." Then the weather girl said there might be more snow tomorrow.

It’s rumbly out there.

Today's weather is my favorite kind: sunny with distant thunder.

Chanel No. 19.

Found a book at Goodwill called How to Make Love to a Man. 1981. The dust jacket's gone, which, makes me sad, but amazon shows a paperback with a big kiss print on it. (It also suggests I shouldn't get this book confused with How to Make Great Love to a Man or All Night Long: How to Make Love to a Man over 50.) It's full of advice from hookers and geishas, including the basics of "nondemanding stroking," which is always put in quotes, like it's a term, as well as male turn-offs, like "the lap-sitter" and "the crotch grabber." I'm just skimming – because, really, what do I care? – but when she suggested men like their armpits licked, I had to put it down and get the imagined taste of deodorant out of my mouth. She seems to repeat these directives a lot, though: "No fast or sudden moves" and "keep all your movements fluid." Sounds more trying to befriend a rabbit than messing around.

But I'm learning things. Did you know 19^th century French prostitutes were referred to as les grandes horizontales? Or that some women dab their – in her words – "personal perfume" on the light bulbs to scent a room? A Philadelphia "pro" suggests making love in the spare bedroom for kicks.

Maybe I'll leave it on the free book table at school. See who picks it up.

Winter storm warning.

  
Did you think I was done posting about the weather? It's been snowing all day, and it's supposed to keep going until tomorrow night. It's not unexpected; there's always and April snow storm. But it's a little disheartening after last Friday's 70 degrees. Lucky I hadn't put my shovel away yet.

Check out the weird little eye of the storm east of the Stonington Peninsula. Wonder what goes on there.

Like compost.

Not long ago, Consumer Reports did a study on coffee and named Eight O'Clock their best brand, based on some combination of taste and price. They said it had a complex blend of earthy and fruity flavors, which meant nothing to me really. But I'm not a coffee snob, so I'm all about finding the cheapest drinkable coffee. I bought a giant bag of it.

It's so disgusting. I can hardly force it down. But I can't throw it away either, so I'm making things worse by trying to get through the bag quicker and making it even stronger. I had to buy creamer just to get it down. Mornings are such trouble lately.

Just wanted to warn you. Don't fall for it.

Good Sherry, Bad Sherry.

Why does the spring sunshine make me want to go to the bar? I should feel the warm breeze through my window and want to walk along the Dead River or the beach, or get out my bike or chop wood or something, but no. I want to call you up, Dodson, and tell you I'm on my way over cause it's peanut night at the Base.

Send me a dream.

If I play my cards right, I may be getting some planograms in the mail soon. They may even be suitable for framing.

(Just FYI, Wikipedia says, "They may also be referred to as plano-grams, plan-o-grams, or POGs.")

Jam.

I broke two toes being a klutz. Spent a day limping around campus and whining at my students, but this morning, I went to the clinic. The x-ray tech was very bored with my "I stubbed by toes" story and suggested telling everybody it was a roller derby accident. Hell yes. Except instead of a roller skate, I've got a flat-bottomed Velcro shoe. Guess that's how we do it on the Granite Street Magma. Go team.

Woundikins.

Turn off your sound before you check out http://www.savethewords.org/, but do check it out. A beautiful collage of words that have fallen out of favor. They encourage us to adopt a word and help bring it back. I'm dedicated to the whole idea, but probably only cloakatively.

Tapped.

You know how people pocket-call you, accidentally dial you with their cell phone and give you weird, unrequested access to their current conversation with someone else? Hover used to do this all the time. I'd hear him laughing in the Scout, adjusting the dog's goggles or whatever. Sunday, I pocket-answered, somehow. I was on a walk in my neighborhood and Peter called. I didn't answer because, as Peter and everybody knows, I don't answer.

But I must have actually answered, because Peter wrote me and said he listened to my life for the next twenty minutes. He thought it sounded like I was washing dishes, which must have been when I crossed the footbridge over the creek. Just before that, I know I talked to a dog. He looked mean, so I used my sweet voice, and then I was embarrassed because I didn't realize the owner was sitting on the porch having a smoke. (I used my sweet voice to say hi to her too, just so she didn't think I was faking it for the dog.)

But otherwise, it must have been a pretty boring listen – me crunching on the snow, trying not to slide down the hills. Coming home and saying hello to my car. Sorry not to be more entertaining.

Actually, maybe I realized this had happened in the back of my head, because I got paranoid last night in bed, when I said some far-too-familiar thing to one of the cats, the kind of thing a lonely girl might want to say to a person, and I thought, geesh, if anybody could hear me. How mortifying.

Scrapbook.

This is why Facebook is distressing to me. There are pictures of me like this floating around online. (Seriously, this one's kind of great, but the one of me and my 1988 boyfriend in a mullet? That, I can't even post.)

But then, I forgive Facebook when somebody sends me this. My very first love, looking all plaid and happy and awkward.

Radar flipbook.

I'm just so in love with the TV6 weather art.

  

Makes snow look like fireworks. So far, we're still in the eye of the storm.

Weathered.

It appears If I could get as far as Mackinac County, I could actually escape this godforsaken peninsula.

Update: I'm just cleaning and watching Last Restaurant Standing on BBC America (they have to serve as much of a whole pig as possible, so one team fried up the innards and put them on a salad, calling it "crispy pork," which seems low), when the TV started beeping. For a "Civil Emergency Message," I should turn to Channel 4. So I did: M-28 is closed again (it was last week for a while too).

I'm putting on my costume tonight anyway. Playing bingo by myself. The cats are all dressing up as the stars from Hotel for Dogs. Argh.

The Curious Ham of Benjamin Pickles and Cream Cheese.

Blue skies this morning, but I'm still snowed in. Remember how I said I hired a plow service and wouldn't that be nice if it just worked out from then on? Yeah. They apparently forgot about me after the first time they came. (I think I attributed one of my neighbor's nice gestures to them.) They also forgot to bill me, so I've decided not to fuss about it. But geez – now there's also a note on my door asking me to read my water meter and call somebody. I don't even know where my water meter is or why they can't just take care of business without bothering me.

So at some point, I have to go dig myself out today, though I'm pretty comfy here, so it won't be anytime soon. Tomorrow, I leave for my Oscar party (weather permitting (everything in my life is weather permitting)), so I know I'll do it by then. I'm just sad I can't even pay somebody to take care of me.

You don’t want to know.

Joan Didion says only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast. Which many days keeps me from blogging.

Can you get Chuck Taylors with crampons?

It's weird out today – warm and melty without feeling particularly springish. But schools are closed all over the UP except here, and I'm not sure why. Though the ice may have something to do with it. I wore tennies to work today instead of boots, so I slid all the way from my parking spot to my office, including down this hill with a car following right on my ass. I wanted to hitch a ride on its back bumper, like in Back to the Future. I could have if I didn't have coffee in one hand.

So even though the melting exposes the dirty underneath of everything, I'm still rooting for it to go on. For the snow to rumble off my roof, for my driveway to level, for the mountains at the street corners to get smaller so every single stop sign isn't a roll of the dice against oncoming traffic.

Throwing rocks.

Check out this awesome Xmas present Little Sweet received in the mail yesterday. (Thank you, Poodle! What a pretty neckline on that shirt, too.) I opened it on the phone with my girl, so I had to describe it to her. It's shiny pink! And it says Sweet! She already knows she loves it. And, I told her, it's so cool, shaped like the top half of a bowling bag.

Halt. What's a bowling bag? she wanted to know.

It's for your bowling ball. Duh. But she's like, where are you taking your bowling ball that you need to put it in a bag?

Fair enough. I just get hit by the things that mean nothing to her – like "roll up your window" (what, press this button?) – though this one's not so much generational as my fault. We need to hit the lanes more. It's either that or really practice our horseshoe throwing come spring. A girl's got to have some skills.

Full measure of happiness.

Today, it's pretty outside – blue sky and double-digit warm, and yesterday's big snow is still white. It's a whole new world with a whole new president.

It's also the day my little girl finally gets to take out her starter studs and put in any earrings she wants. She reminds me how lucky I am: I have this very option every morning of my life. I do. In fact, I have lots of options every morning. Might do me some good to remember that, and to actually gussy things up once in a while.

Plagued.

The snowflakes outside my office are as big as crickets.

I didn’t even flush an ice cube.

Schools are closed here today (and over a lot of the UP) because of cold. I had a list of errands to run today, but I can't quite make myself go outside. I can get more Modge Podge in the spring.