if you can't take the cold, stay out of the kitchen

I wish I were as thin and young as I used to be back when I used to think I was fat and old.

sigh.

We're waging window wars here at my house. I'm the kind of fresh air freak who gets all claustrophobic if there's even a threat of stuffiness in a room. As soon as the temperature outside crests the 65 degree mark, I'm opening the windows. Sometimes even before, if a flash hits, which has been happening more frequently these past few months.

And I absolutely have to have the window open at night, no matter what. Especially because my hubby is like a radiator -- nice to cozy up to on a chilly winter night, when my feet are cold, but not so much during those times I have to throw off the down comforter and turn the pillow over to the cool side.

So how is it that during the day he follows me around shutting windows, complaining about being cold? Is it some kind of cruel joke that his aging thermostat and mine are in conflict?
Just one more case of the Divine Matchmaker having a cosmic laugh at pairing two polar opposites? Maybe that's it -- either iron will sharpen iron, we'll learn to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, or I'll have to move to a tent in the back yard.

It once was lost, but now it's found.... or not technically a miracle but big fun nevertheless

You will never guess what my daughter-in-law brought to the track meet tonight with her. Besides Baby James in his darling little sandals.

No really, you will never guess. Because I couldn't believe my own eyes.

MY LONG-LOST PASHMINA SCARF! The one I received as a gift the morning we left Korea back in January.

I know I had it when I went to the hospital the day James was born almost three months ago, but I hadn't seen it since. I searched, I grieved, then I gave it up as lost and gone forever dreadful sorry Clementine. Lynn was so dear -- she shopped for a replacement one for me, and that was almost nicer than the original gift, because it was such a sweet gesture.

So I don't know how it suddenly resurfaced in Dave and Cerissa's back seat. These things happen to me all the time.

I went through a stamping phase a few years back. Not stomping -- stamping. And I lost a really handy little star stamp, which annoyed me to no end. MONTHS later .. maybe even a year... there it was one day, in plain view on the floor in front of my laundry chute basket. Where I would have seen it at least once every day, the way I'm constantly, obsessively doing laundry. I don't get it.

But let me assure you that when she handed me that scarf this afternoon? Oh , there was much rejoicing.

And also Garrison ran the 400 at his new personal best time. And the sun was out. AND I found out I get to have Lily for a week starting Friday!

The only downer of the day was Jason Castro's abyssmal performance tonight on Idol. What in the world. (If he wasn't so darned cute and charming...) I haven't been that uncomfortable watching anyone perform in quite a while. I'm so sorry. I know he's an Aggie, and I think he might be a Christian, but he was really Not Good.

Syesha and David A. were pretty incredible, I thought. I keep trying hard to love David Cook. Truly I do. I was honestly eager to see what he'd bring tonight since it's supposed to be his genre and all. But really? Were those the best songs he could come up with ? I have been listening to rock and roll for a verrrrry long time, and I have never heard that teenage wasteland song. I just thought it was a weird choice.

But overall the balance in my life is beginning to tip. Not a shabby way to temper the broken and unfixable iPod, the broken camera that Jim attempted to fix and ended up breaking further, and the scorched and smelly microwave.

The view from the pit is looking up.

fifty is the new fifteen

In some sort of bizarre Desmond-ian time toggle, I am being forced to relive my geeky adolescence. As if it wasn't bad enough going through it the first time.

I have blemishes (really they're pimples, but I'm trying to be delicate). True, they're interspersed with wrinkles, but they're there, nonetheless.

I feel weird in my clothes.

I look at other girls' hair and wish mine looked like theirs.

I want to stay up late and sleep in late.

I want to eat junk food.

I am following closely who gets voted off American Idol.

I have a special blanket and I don't want to share it.

I feel all lazy and unmotivated.

I worry about fitting in.

I care about what people think of me.

I want people to like me.

I sent out a chain letter and now I'm embarrassed about it. OK, it was an e-mail recipe exchange, but the premise was the same. The only thing that was missing was the part that said, "If you break this chain, you will be cursed with split ends." One of my friends sent back an e-mail that said her life was too crazy right now to do this kind of thing and suddenly I'm, like, duh. What was I thinking? What am I, like, a dork? Like, ugh, seriously. (*rolling eyes and smacking forehead*)

Just as quickly as you can say, "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates, you've got a brand new key," all the insecurities and self-doubt of my awkward teenage years resurfaced. I don't think they were ever buried very deeply, quite frankly.

My daughter is fond of telling me about these incredible celebrity women who are SO delighted to be fifty. They've never felt more confident. They're sure of who they are. They feel more alive, more secure in their unique strengths than ever before.

I don't get it.

Somehow the Grow-Up Fairy has passed right over me without stopping to dispense any maturity whatsoever.

Here's a series of phone calls that really happened just the other day, involving my brother, my mother, and me:

Brother: Mom just called. She's really upset about that thing you did/said. I told her she should talk to you about it.
Me (calling Mom): I understand you're really upset about that thing I did/said.
Mom: No, I'm fine. I told him not to tell you.
Me: Why did you tell him not to tell me, if you're fine?
Mom: Because it was just between me and him. I'm going to call him now and tell him he shouldn't have told you.
Me: Don't call him. This is between me and you, if I upset you.
Mom: No. I'm hanging up right now and I'm going to call him. Now I'm mad at him.
Me (calling Brother): Mom says she's fine, but she's going to be calling you to tell you you shouldn't have told me that she told you she was upset.
Brother: You didn't believe her, did you?

If I hadn't been so worked up over the whole thing, I would have noticed the uncanny similarity between this and 9th grade with me, Jeannette and Lucinda. I can almost picture the scene in the lunchroom cafeteria -- "I told her not to tell you that I had told her that you like him but you don't like her. If she finds out that I know that you know, she will think that you told me after she told you not to tell." "I won't tell. Just don't let her know that I told you I like him. Are you going to eat that Ding Dong?"

Geeesh.

Maybe I'm just a late bloomer, and by the time I turn 70 I will have found my wisdom and stability. Either that or I'll be too senile to care.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put some new rubber bands on my braces.

addition edition

The workmen were out there banging around this afternoon



and I heard a terrific crash in the kitchen. How did this purple glass vase



get shaken out of and fall from this cabinet high above my stove, all the way down to the floor




hitting and denting my tea kettle on the way,



and not break into a thousand hundred pieces? First we had the case of the vanishing scarf, then the inexplicable lady bug appearance, and now inquiring minds want to know the answer to this mystery.


There have been three casualties of the addition that are especially hard for me to bear. One was the loss of my kitchen window pie shelf, which was so handy for storing pots of soup and Christmas cookies in the winter. The second was the thermometer that let me know whether the temperature was below 40 degrees, so that it would be safe to put my pot of soup out there. And the third is my awesome exhaust vent. This thing is like a commercial-grade, industrial-powered super sucking fan that just whooshes everything out. Jim had to re-locate it and it's just not quite the same.



At least my laundry chute isn't in jeopardy yet.

get me Bill Nye on the phone

Explain this, if you can -- we have had simply frigid temperatures this whole month, with abundant snowfalls. I haven't seen the grass in ages. The lake is frozen solid (the above photo is actually the view down my driveway.)

So how in the name of all that's logical was there a ladybug on my bathroom windowsill this afternoon? What in the world?

We used to suffer hideous ladybug infestations, so I wasn't at all charmed -- just perplexed and miffed. It's been a good two years since our last outbreak.

I know what you're thinking. Ladybugs are cute and sweet, right? They're on greeting cards and wallpaper and baby clothes.
But don't buy into the deceptive P.R. hype. Take it from me. If you've ever lived through a ladybug plague, you know that they're really evil. They bite! Yes they do. They stink. They reproduce like crazy.

So I did what any right-thinking woman would do in defense of her home. I squished him in a wad of toilet paper, then flushed him away.

I'd just like to know how he got there to begin with, in the dead of winter like that. Winter is supposed to be the season we don't have to deal with flies, mosquitoes, ants, wasps, earwigs, and ladybugs. Had he been incubating for the past several years or what?

Please submit all theories to our research department STAT.