Donde Esta El Bano?

I hate it when it rains. I have two itty bitty Chihuahuas that flat out refuse to relieve themselves outside when it is raining. My female won't even leave the garage. She'll walk to the edge realize it's raining, and tuck tail all the way back to the door. If I pick her up and carry her little ass to the grass she just stands there quaking with a look that says...just shoot me. I've found that my yelling at her doesn't produce a single drop of pee either. Holding an umbrella doesn't work—she's afraid of it. My retarded little male doesn't know how to pee because he covers up her pee, so he has no clue what to do. He just runs around in circles smelling the ground for anything remotely familiar so that he can relieve his tiny little bladder. Sadly, it's quite funny, but also frustrating as hell.

I have pretty much quit trying to make them pee in the rain. I went to PetsMart and invested in those "stay at home pads" for dogs that are too old (or too stupid) to pee outside. My male, Rascal, thinks those are the best invention ever. He can finally empty his bladder and bowels without having to wait for Maya, my female. Of course, having a tiny brain means his aim is off and sometimes he pisses all over the hardwood, but at least he makes an effort. Maya will hold it...and hold it....and hold it. She goes on some kind of twisted self-destructive urination strike...I'm not peeing inside on that big square pad that you've put on the floor, it's gross...I don't like to get my feet wet, so I'm not going outside either...I'll just hold it thank you very much... I'm pretty sure she's going to die from some kind of teeny tiny bladder infection because when she finally goes, her urine is yellowish brown. That can't be a good sign.

So, it's supposed to rain for like the next three days. I hope there is a break in the clouds long enough that I can get my two little school bus dogs outside to do their business. I know that if they could speak they wouldn't ask Yo Quiero Taco Bell? They'd be asking...Donde esta el bano?

The Six Flags Diet

Feeling low? Maybe you've gained a few l-b's, and you are feeling badly about the way you look. Well, let me tell you how to fix that. The quickest way to boost your self esteem is to spend the day at an amusement park or a state fair. You will come home feeling downright sexy! I pay good money to go to Six Flags just to people watch. My family gets to have a blast riding roller coasters, and my ego gets lifted—it's great! Nope, no Jenny Craig, Deal-a-Meal or gym membership can shock your system like an ogling at your local fun park. Muffin top used to have one meaning—now it is also used to describe the disturbing, fat, fleshy overhang of skin around a woman's mid section that is usually protruding from her three sizes too small Hollister t-shirt. You know she looked in the mirror before she left her house, and thought she was dressed. She probably thought she looked gooood, too. Really, is that supposed to be sexy in any way? Do men see that and think...man I would love to tap that?! Maybe there are some twisted fellas out there that find that look sexy, but I'm guessing they are not modeling for GQ.

I was nervous last summer when we went to Six Flags. I was still a hefty girl, and was more than a little worried about my big ass fitting into the teeny tiny "seats" on the roller coasters. Have you ever heard the saying...trying to put ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag? Well...I watched in horror as three muffin tops before me got handed their walking papers because once they had stuffed and molded their ten pounds of plumpy parts into the five pounds of seat, the lap bar would not slam down over their thunderous thighs. It was not for lack of trying either. Those attendants tried repeatedly to maneuver and jostle that lap bar in a vain attempt not to have to humiliate another over sized woman. So, clearly you can feel my angst at the moment it was my turn to shove my ten pounds of junk into the seat. Mercifully, I fit. Of course I now know why they make those seats so damn small. Fat people have no business riding roller coasters. My inner thighs were black and blue for a week from clenching down in terror during the fifty-five second ride, and I was dizzy and nauseated for an hour afterwards. Yeah. I've had my Goliath experience, and once was enough for me.

I can't avoid another trip to Six Flags this year. After all, I have two eager young girls (and one husband) who are adrenaline junkies just like we all were at that age. I'll have less junk this year, thankfully, but I think my excuse this time may have to be that older folks should not ride eighty mile per hour roller coasters, or any roller coasters for that matter. I don't enjoy coming home from a day at Six Flags feeling like I need to be in traction. So, maybe I'll just sit idly by and people watch because it does do a body good!

Love Glue

Do you remember the very first time you ever had your heart broken? I do. I remember it vividly...all of the anguish, all the disbelief, all of the insecurity, and especially feeling absolutely certain that my heart would never heal. I didn't think I would ever recover, but of course I did. Time heals, right? Right—until the next time, and the next time, and the next time—but somehow that first heartbreak is the worst. It is in that moment that you realize everything you thought you knew about love was a lie. Everything you ever dared to dream about love becomes just that, a dream. So, soon you realize that love isn't anything like you've read about in books, or seen in movies. If it were, there would be no reason to write the books or make the movies. People would just walk around in a perpetual state of bliss and happiness. No one would ever get divorced, it would be utopia, right?

Right now I have two little girls whose idea of romantic love is what they read in books and see in movies or on Disney Channel. So, I was taken aback when my older daughter (10) asked me...Mommy, do you think there are men out there who love their women like Edward loves Bella? ( from the Twilight series) Wow! I mean...WOW! I gave pause. How do you answer that? I don't lie to my kids. No...there aren't sweetie...Edward is a character in a book...relationships are much more difficult in the real world...there may be some out there, but believe me they are very rare. If I can in some small measure give her hope while still being realistic, then that's what I would like to impart to her. Like any good mother, someday I will purge all the personal, gory, sordid, and yes, happy details of my own love experiences. No matter what I say or do though, I know someday she will suffer her first heartbreak, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent it.

Love—simple, complex, powerful, eternal. People long for it, people fear it, sadly some never find it. This single emotion, this emotion synonymous with our Creator, is perhaps the hardest emotion. There are so many facets to love. We love our parents differently than we love our friends. We love our spouses differently than we love our children. We love our Creator differently than we love ourselves. We write songs and poetry about it. Some of the best movies ever made are movies about love. Love can evoke laughter, euphoria, elation, bliss, joy, tenderness, comfort, but also tears, obsession, lies, jealousy, rage, fear, and even death. Love can break us, but love can save us as well. Love mends the broken heart, for if it didn't we'd never love again. Maybe ultimately, that is the lesson I need to impart to my girls. Your heart will get broken, but Love will be the glue that puts the pieces back together so that you will be able to love again.

Dandelion Head

My hair is falling out. I'm not kidding. Not only can I tell by the handfuls of stringy brown hair that I see go down the drain in the shower, but I can see it in the mirror. I can see my scalp through the wisps of hair on my crown. It's alarming, people! Baldness is hereditary and runs rampant in my family. Why is it we only think of men going bald? You know you've seen women before who are sporting a comb over, or worse. What's worse than a female comb over you may ask? Dandelion head. 

My grandmother educated me about dandelion headed women. She'd say...when I die, don't let your Papaw get with one of them dandelion heads. When you have to go to a beauty parlor once a week to have what's left of your hair spun into a thin, thin cotton candy poof ball atop your head...you have achieved dandelion status. You may have seen these women in church, or trying desperately to see over the steering wheel of their land yacht on the way home from church. Their hair, perfectly coiffed in the shape of a giant dandelion...so thin you can see right through it. You stare in wonder—imagining yourself walking up, making a wish, and with the slightest puff of your breath the dandelion breaks apart, sailing off on a breeze! Can you imagine the amount of Aqua Net required to hold that structure in place? Do you have to sign a waiver before a dandelion 'do?.....do not stand within ten feet of an open flame...do not smoke...do not cook with natural gas appliances...do not sit in close proximity to space heaters.... 

Yes, the vision of my senior years is looking more bleak by the day. Baldness, chin hair, incontinence, senility...I'd better live it up for the foreseeable future. I've got maybe nine good years left of being able to be seen in a public place without causing embarrassment to my immediate family! I love that I can laugh at myself—life is too short to worry about things you have no control over. Life is too short to be afraid of "what ifs." I embrace the day when I will proudly exit the beauty parlor with my first dandelion head...thank god I quit smoking!

Bargain Basement Boobs

My girlfriend brought an advertisement to my attention yesterday that brought about waves of raucous laughter for us, and other like minded twisted minds out there to be sure. Apparently the economy is so bad that plastic surgeons are giving deals on boob jobs. The image of a carnival barker instantly came to mind...step right up ladies...buy one breast implant and we'll give you the second one free...so, hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up...Call me crazy, but I don't want my breasts anywhere near the lowest bidder. I'm afraid I'll wind up looking like a Picasso. I want top dollar titties, and I won't mind paying very high prices for quality work when the time comes.

I love these women who go to third world countries for their nip/tucks and come home with a face full of industrial grade silicone, and then complain about being deformed. Are we suppose to be shocked? Are we supposed to feel sorry for them? I mean really...hello, what did they expect? If patient and doctor don't even speak the same language, and are relying on translators and hand gestures to communicate then, like it or not, you'll be eating all of your meals through a straw because you won't be able to close your mouth. Heeey...you saved a lot of money though, right? I believe in the adage, 'you get what you pay for.' Cheaper and plastic surgery are two words that don't belong next to each other—ever.

So, for now I'm content to stick with my mighty push-em-up bra to elevate my boobs out from around my belly button. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only somewhat. I'm not as vain as I used to be, but I still want to look my best especially when I sell millions of copies of my book and am suddenly thrust into the public eye. When that very first royalty check slides into my palm, I'll be the first in line at Dr. Rey's in Beverly Hills for the finest nippin' and tuckin' money can buy. You'll never look at me and say...Oooh, poor woman. All she could afford was those bargain basement boobs....

For Sam

More commonly referred to as birthmarks, angel kisses are strawberry red marks seen right after birth and fade with age. My youngest daughter, Samantha, turns nine on Sunday. I wrote this for her.


Angel Kisses

You were born with angel kisses,
The nurses told me so.

There's one on your left shoulder,
And underneath your nose.

The angels up in heaven must have been sad to see you go,
So they covered you with kisses from your head down to your toes.

They thought the kisses would wear off before I saw your face,
But two remained reminding me of God's eternal grace.

You are a very special gift from Him you see,
Wrapped in love with angel kisses, delivered tenderly.

So undeserving and yet so proud,
It's my honor and charge to watch over you now.

Even though my kisses may not leave their mark,
I know that as you grow, you'll feel them in your heart.

And so, my Earth Angel I give you all my love,
I know we're being smiled upon from angels up above.

TR 2001

Funny, Not Funny, Carbohydrate Addict Confession

Being on a diet sucks. Of course I wouldn't be on a diet if I hadn't gotten fat...again. I wasn't allowed to eat as a child; my mom was afraid I'd get fat. Her fears were well founded because apparently I have the fat gene swimming around somewhere in my gene pool. So consequently when I got pregnant, and was allowed to eat whatever the hell I wanted, my brain suddenly bridged a synapse connection I'd not made in my youth, and I gained 55 pounds during my first pregnancy. Within a year I had lost it, and so, not being completely repulsed by my appearance any longer, my husband knocked me up shortly after my daughter's first birthday. I gained 75 pounds the second go 'round, and kept it on for three long years. Post-partum depression fueled my appetite for processed, partially hydrogenated food. I was like a wild animal entering the grocery store, drooling, snarling, and gnashing teeth as I made my way to the Hostess aisle. I was the female version of Fat Bastard...get in my belly...I want my baby back, baby back, baby back...ribs. I'm not kidding...

Kicking carbohydrates was like detoxing from heroin. I had headaches, shakes and nausea, which I think would have made for a great episode of Intervention...My name is Traci...T-r-a-c-i, and I'm addicted to Twinkies. Cameras could have followed me to my dealer...the Kroger, sometimes Publix, and filmed me getting my fix: Cherry Garcia, Edwards pie, powdered donuts, chips and dip, pizza, cookies, cinnamon rolls, Twinkies of course...and that was just for breakfast! They could have captured my frenzied feeding ritual, the euphoric high during the dopamine dump, and then my inevitable crash as my pancreas, liver and digestive system struggled to process massive amounts of artery clogging "food." I'd be filmed all strung out on the couch in my mu mu yelling...get that f**king camera outta my face asshole! After the crash, I'd need another hit. Producers would beg me not to drive in my condition, and offer to drive me to my next destination. I need fries...I could say weakly as they helped me to the waiting SUV with tinted windows. Fast food joints knew me on a first name basis. Okay, so not really but I was convinced they did. I would hit the Mickey D's up for two cheeseburgers, extra large fries, two apple pies and a gallon of coke. Some days I'd do that twice. I'm not kidding...

So, eventually I did lose 110 pounds on a low carb, or no carb diet as I like to call it. I kept it off for over a year. I looked gooood, too honey! I know what you're thinking...then why and the hell did you gain all of it back and then some you big dumb ass. I'm an idiot, that's why. I foolishly thought I had conquered my addiction, but clearly it is a much bigger problem than I realized. I knew it was time to get back on the wagon when I had to start buying deodorant for my coochie...yes coochie. Let me tell you, when you are so fat that you sweat down there, it's time to make a change ladies. Then to add insult to injury, the coochie spray gave me a rash in my ass crack...okay maybe it was the sweat in my ass crack that gave me a rash, but addicts are often in denial about their predicaments. I got really excited when I could stop buying FDS. If you are like me, I shop at the same grocery store every time I buy groceries. I was tired of avoiding checkout lines with male cashiers. I'm not kidding...

Happily, I have about forty more pounds to lose before I'm back down to my goal weight. Once I'm there the only problem I'll have is stretch marks and saggy skin. It was kinda gross the first time around. My belly looked like raw veal scallopini dangling there especially when I bent over, which is why I'm convinced that I'll need a surgical procedure to pull and tuck me back into shape. If I don't, I'll look like albino elephant knees in ten years, or worse, Donatella Versace...minus the wax lips. I'm not kidding...

Choices

I was poised at my laptop this morning trying to get my thoughts together for today's blog when my cat, Tiger, unaware that I was "working" jumped into my lap without invitation. He is a fifteen pound orange Tabby with a purr so loud and rhythmic it makes me want to stop whatever it is I'm doing and just worship him, which is always his intent I'm quite sure. I read once that the simple act of stroking a cat for a few minutes every day can add years to your life. So, I have two just in case. I'm all for adding more years to my life as long as they are quality years...(see yesterday's blog).

I used to be so stressed and worried about everyday life that I was wired for high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, type II diabetes, brain aneurysm, or cancer. I did spend a few years in a depressive funk and gained back all the weight (110+) that I lost years ago. Turning forty last year was my wake up call. Life is a gift...let me say it again, life is a gift! It is a beautiful thing to wake up and hear songbirds outside your window greeting the day the only way they know how...with music and song. They praise the creation of another glorious day. They don't piss and moan about the crappy economy, or higher taxes, or health care reform. Maybe they would if they turned on their TV, because according to the media we're all suffering immeasurably and it's just getting worse, or so I hear. I don't watch the news anymore. I don't need someone telling me over and over again just how bad things are. I'm smart enough to figure that out for myself, thank you very much. Besides, social consciousness can effect the nature of reality. If you say a thing is so long enough, it will be so. It's just the law of the Universe. I don't let it effect me. I choose to focus my energy on positive thinking instead.

This world in which we live is a beautiful and wondrous place. Lots of people ask me why I call my blog Entanglement. Entanglement is a quantum theory that everything in the Universe is connected, and intimately linked on some level that is beyond time and space. I like that. Even though we as a people are different on so many levels we share this commonality...we are connected at some deeper level that we don't yet comprehend. The "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" rule starts to hit home now. If I do something to you, then I am really doing it to me as well because we are all connected. Was Jesus giving a lesson in quantum theory two thousand years ago, and explaining it in a way people of the time would understand? I like to think he was...

So, I choose to laugh, because laughter is the best medicine. I choose to stop and smell the roses, because they are put here for me to enjoy. I choose to create my circumstances, not let my circumstances choose me. I choose a lightness of being, because a heavy heart causes illness. I choose to believe that anything is possible, even that at some unfathomable level I am connected to you, Mother Earth, the sun, moon, stars, the Creator and all of the infinite unseen of the Universe. Now, that's worth getting out of bed for, my friend!

Wolf Woman

I found a gray eyebrow recently. Horrified, I plucked that sucker faster than I could ask...what the hell? Now, my hair started turning gray in my twenties, but there is a little thing called hair color that can fix that in a snap. What do you do when hair that's not on your head starts graying? Pluck it, I say. With my luck, ten more will grow in its place. I'll look like Andy Rooney in another year or two. I can't help but wonder if somewhere down the road I'll have to shave my eyebrows off and draw them back on with a pencil. That should look really attractive with the hair on my chinny chin chin...and what is up with that?! Forget my expiring eggs...where's my estrogen? I am way too young to have whiskers sprouting from my chin, but there they are all stubbly, black and manly protruding from my face. I pluck those suckers too. Pretty soon I'll have to go have them lasered because they seem to be multiplying...multiplying! Maaan, what an attractive older woman I'll be with my fuzzy gray eyebrows and goatee...no thanks.

You gotta love getting older, although, my mom looks fantastic. She hasn't had any work done and still looks amazing. I don't think she had to experience chin hair or graying eyebrows for surely she would have mentioned it to me, her only daughter. I'll probably look like a she wolf by the time I reach her age. The anti-aging gene skipped over me, I think. What else is there to look forward to I ask? Well, there's incontinence. Right now it's pretty much under control, but there have been occasions when riotous laughter has produced a stream of tinkle that can't be pinched off...can you say Kegel exercise? I'll be that woman in the commercial...gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. Just put me in a diaper for the love of god! I just hope my memory doesn't fail me, so then at least I can remember that I used to be normal. If my memory does go (Alzheimer's runs in the family) I'll be a sad, little old hairy wolf woman who smells like urine, and can't remember what day it is much less that I used to be kinda cute.

In all seriousness, I don't worry about getting older, or whatever changes my body has to undergo. I am living my life in the eternal moment of now because that is all we have. We are, each one, on our own soul journey. We are here to grow the spirit. My body is what I have it's not who I am after all. 

SMH, wolf woman—hahahahahahaha.

Great Balls of Fire!

I think my eggs are about to expire. I'm not talking about the EggLand's Best in my fridge—no I'm talking about the three or four left in my ovaries that are screaming at me to be fertilized. Most women call it their biological clock ticking. I have to disagree. I don't hear ticking I hear those little suckers begging, pleading, and yes, sometimes screaming to couple with a sperm and create life. I have been ignoring their insane request for quite some time now. I drown out their little voices by rationally explaining to them that I already have two perfectly good children who, by the way, have been out of diapers for a very long time. What kind of dumb ass gets pregnant after age forty anyway, I ask myself? Hell, I'll be going through the change in about ten more years. All the more reason for you to copulate, my eggs yell at me. 

I brought this up with my husband a few days ago. Usually he breaks into his song and dance routine about: being pregnant, morning sickness, weight gain, swollen ankles, mood swings, hemorrhoids, labor, newborn, crib, changing table, bottles, breast pumps, sleep deprivation, diapers—well, you get the gist. All of that is true, but I think the real reason may lie in the fact that he had a vasectomy nine years ago. It was the mother of all vasectomies, too. They snipped, clipped, trimmed, roped, tied and cauterized his poor vas deferens into oblivion. His balls were actually smoking at one point. I know because I was there. Call me crazy, but if your husband's balls are ever on fire there is no chance he will go anywhere near a dick doctor ever again! 

So—I went a different route with my questioning. Isn't there a way to retrieve your sperm without reversing the vasectomy, I asked coyly? I'm thinking, really, it's the 21st century, surely they have the technology. There must be a way of sucking those little guys and gals out of there without setting anything ablaze. His reaction surprised me—no song and dance, just a thoughtful moment and a smile. A smile! There may be a glimmer of hope for my eggs after all! Of course this is all just a pipe dream. We should have thought more carefully about our decision to have one of us fixed. Every year after the first five, my husband's sperm began to die, which means that for the last four years his sperm count has decreased from billions and billions to just billions. The sperm also loses quality. Loses quality—that's all I need. My shriveled up egg and his low quality sperm and we'd wind up with Spongebob Squarepants for an offspring. There is the chance, however, that we could wind up with a perfect child. We've done it twice already. That's what my eggs say when they're not yelling at me anyway. 

So—my biological clock sounds more like an ambulance siren or an air horn than a quiet ticking, which is pretty hard to ignore sometimes. I'm starting to have a better understanding of women who have kids graduating from high school and a babe in arms. I used to think they were crazy. It's not craziness that drove them to start all over, it was the damned ambulance siren blaring away in their head at ungodly hours of the night that they just wanted to silence! A moment of insomnia silences the siren, and nine months later the wailing really starts. Lucky for me it's going to take forethought, planning, and surgical procedure if I want to get pregnant again, but try telling that to my eggs that are about to expire!

Wash-Dry-Fold Repeat

I hate doing laundry. As a matter of fact, I don't know one single person who gets fired up and excited to spend precious time washing and drying clothes...y'all are out there though, aren't you? My aversion to doing laundry can be traced back to years of doing other peoples' laundry when my mom owned a coin operated laundry facility in Atlanta. You would not believe how much you can learn about a person just by washing, drying, and folding their clothes. That is what the service is called by the way, wash, dry, and fold; and it's hard work, people. It's not fluff and fold as some people falsely advertise. Fluff implies some waif in a sexy maid's uniform with five inch stilettos gently caressing your unmentionables. Maybe that's why the majority of customers were men. Imagine their dismay when the woman doing the washing was a five foot, plump, middle aged, cherub with man hands.

So, how much do you charge someone to wash their clothes for them? Not enough as far as I'm concerned, but in fact you charge by the pound. Are we washing clothes or buying fruit? Seriously, there was a giant scale that was constantly being broken by some clueless guy whose entire wardrobe was wrapped up in his full sized sheet set. He would wobble in, hidden by a mound of green, brown and navy plaid, and drop the dead weight onto the scale before you could warn him about the weight limit. The scale would bottom out, which was never a good thing especially when there was nothing but a sheet holding the bundle together. In order to calculate the weight of the mass, you were then resigned to unwrapping the package and removing weight until the scale returned to its normal function. I preferred the, guess how much it weighs, method because removing weight required taking some stranger's nasty, grungy, smelly, don't know where it's been, personal things off the top of the pile until the scale worked again. It was painful to do, and even more painful to watch. The person's expression turned to horror as you instructed him to unwrap his goodies so that you could plunder through them. All I can say is thank god for latex gloves. Over the years we found roaches, crabs, urine (cat and/or human), vomit, animal hair (the proportions of which makes you wonder...how do people live like this?), adult toys, used condoms, money, cigarettes and food. I think some people combined their laundry and garbage duties and left it up to us to determine which was which. The joke was on them though because it was our policy to return anything found in someone's clothes...anything!

These days my reason for hating laundry stems mostly from my lack of proper laundry space. I live in a very nice house, but my laundry room is almost an afterthought. I have issues with it. It's like the size of a small walk in closet right next to my refrigerator. The washer and dryer just barely fit side by side. There is very little space for hanging clothes, which I tend to do a lot of because I don't dry most of my clothes all the way. My mom called it frying clothes when I was young, so I'm left with a mental picture of my clothes literally frying—thanks mom. I also don't buy anything that needs to be dry cleaned because my mom owned a dry cleaning store too. That's a whole different story. You know it's laundry day at my house when, invariably, every square inch of my "laundry room" and kitchen has clothes dangling from the door jambs. It looks like a giant laundry mobile! I guess it could be worse. I could have to pack up my dirty clothes in a king sized sheet and haul it to the nearest soap 'n' suds. Either way, laundry is a chore we all cannot escape, so I guess I'll always be doing wash-dry-fold. At least now it's just my family's urine, vomit and pet hair, and I can handle that.

Drawing From the Patience Well

Patient: 1) putting up with pains or hardships calmly or without complaint 2) showing calm self-control 

I have a problem with patience. I know, I know, lots of people have a problem with patience, but mine is more serious than your average Joe. I think I may be missing the DNA molecule for patience. My lack of patience usually rears its ugly head when I'm driving. I mean, if you absolutely have to use a cell phone while you are driving then it should be mandatory to have a special rating on your driver's license. There are far too many people who shouldn't even be driving an automobile in the first place. What...are they just giving drivers' licenses away down at the DMV?? Here's an idea, put a cell phone in the hand of anyone trying to pass the driving portion of the test. If they can navigate through the orange cone confusion without a single error all while talking to their boss, mother or best friend then give them a permit; and even that should come with conditions. 

This morning my patience was tested at the Toyota dealership while I was getting my car serviced. Let me preface this by saying the Toyota people did nothing wrong. (Embarrassingly, it was all me.) In this age of technology, there are wireless Internet servers everywhere. You can flip open your laptop while taking a crap at McDonald's and be connected to the world wide web. So, for the first time ever, I took my laptop to a public place like some important corporate type, and was ready to blog from somewhere other than my home. Coolly, confidently, I sat down, opened my bag, retrieved my sleek, black IBM laptop, booted it up, waited, double clicked Internet Explorer, and got that dreaded white screen of death telling me I was not connected to the Internet. WHAT? That couldn't be! This is the 21st century. I am supposed to open my laptop turn it on and be surfing the web. Instead I spent twenty minutes patiently ordering my computer to find a wireless connection. I drew from my patience well, and tried to remain cool so that the other people in the waiting area wouldn't know what a complete inept idiot I really am. I could feel my blood pressure rising with every attempt failing to connect me to the web. I had to bite my lip to keep from cursing, and I felt flushed. What smidgen of patience I possessed was g-o-n-e. 

Now, normally in a situation like this I would hurl the laptop across the room, and then drive over it with my car as I leave the dealership. My husband will be the first to tell you how much truth there is to that statement. He has seen me trash perfectly good lamps, dust busters, remote controls, coffee makers, etc., all because my patience well had run dry. He usually rescues them from their untimely death, resurrects them and puts them to use at his office, I think. In my defense, I did try to fix the connection problem I was having with my computer, just like I tried fixing the problems with the other appliances that wouldn't bend to my will. So, if it won't bend, it usually gets broke...because I have no patience. Nothing got broken today though, so I must be getting better. I have learned with age that some things you just need to let go and not worry about. I am acutely aware that my lack of patience is a defect of character. All I can do is keep working on me. I am after all a work in progress, but then aren't we all?

Snow Dregs

Anyone who has ever lived in or around Atlanta knows that once every three or four years we get a significant snow event. Yesterday was one of those days. I made the mandatory trip to the grocery store for supplies Saturday afternoon with my sunroof open and the windows down—it was 69 degrees. The checkout girl and I scoffed at the prediction of one to three inches of snow, really! Still, there I was buying milk just in case. 

What is it about the very mention of the word snow that turns even the most level headed person into a blithering idiot? Perhaps it is the thought of being snowed in with the family unit for days with no electricity. Maybe it's the fact that our thriving metropolis has thirty year old hand me down salt trucks from the tri state area that no one is quite sure how to use. It could be that one driver on the road we're afraid of that insists on going out when they know good and well they should sit their happy ass at home. You know who you are... 

So, the snow came. It came down for hours—big, fat, wet snowflakes that eventually covered the ground about three inches! Children and adults alike emerged from their hovels to marvel at nature's beauty. I love the sound of falling snow and the laughter of children far off in the distance. There is a purity and innocence about it that warms the heart on even the coldest day. 

Homemade hot cocoa warms pink little fingers in the first stages of frostbite after attempting to make a snowman sans gloves. Scarves, pants and shoes hang dripping from the mantle as the fire strains to get hot enough to dry them. Little girls share a chair and a heap of blankets and quilts. They sip their hot mugs and recharge, speaking in hushed tones. They giggle quietly. I observe, careful not to break the spell. It's magical. 

As the snow wanes, the girls turn their attention to other things. Wet snow turns to slush and then disappears from the roads—another benefit to sporadic southern snow events, it doesn't last long. Clear roads and warmer temps both point to the inevitable, no snow day Monday, or so any rational person would surmise. Well, this is the south, and yes, school was canceled today. (OMG!!) So, what do you do on a no snow, snow day? Answer: play in the snow dregs in the backyard for as long as you can, and save some in the freezer as a reminder because it may be another three years before we see it again.