Friday

I finally started working.  I didn't really mean to but it happened anyway.  I have a few starter tasks before I can do any organizing in the English department.  One of those is a newsletter for the new semester, and while I really only intended to look at some possible templates, I somehow got sucked into the project and spent almost all day piecing together articles and important dates and a pretty, Spring-ish layout.  At 2pm I had to stop, take a shower and get dressed - I was needed in the Languages and Lit. office to sign some paperwork.  

Now I'm swiftly wrapping up some baking for my first army-sponsored event (lacking The Staff Sergeant) - a cookie swap.  I've got 8 minutes left on the last batch of Kitchen Sink Cookies and then I'm off.  They smell de-lish!  After meeting some of the wives and of course, swapping cookies, I'll be headed to Nashville to continue the birthday celebrations.  

I could get used to classwork and working from home.  It's doing little to discourage me from being a lifer.  It's been a wonderfully relaxing Friday.  Here's to a good weekend for everyone else!

If this were easy, everyone would be doing it.

"...if there's one thing I learned, it's that when our servicemen and women go to war, their families go with them. I saw how they take care of each other, heard how they fill in whenever the system fails and discovered that the trials they faced always were matched by the hope they shared that better days are still ahead." - Michelle Obama

Thank you for being strong enough to hold me up, live your dreams, and keep us safe all at the same time.  My flowers are beautiful and this morning's brief call made my birthday wonderful!  I hope the deluge of care packages adequately convey how much I love you and how proud I am to be waiting for you to come home.  I'd choose this life again and again and again to spend it with you.  See you in dreams tonight - let's meet somewhere warm!

Dear Birthday Fairy:

To mark my 25th year I would like a bottle of this - 

For this to come early - 

A little more of this -

A LOT of this -

And maybe one of these?

(that last one was for the kittens whose lives I save by loving this ring.  Don't sweat, Sweetheart, it has nothing to do with you!  It's all for the kittens...)

thinking Spring

I'm ebaying from the floor of my living room, right in front of a heavenly space heater.  I just bought this poster for my study.  It says, "HELLO, Spring," while the snow outside says, "Stay warm in your jammies all day long because beyond your walls it is certainly Winter!"  I also like the poem: "Again the forest is fragrant/ The soaring larks lift up aloft/ With them the sky that to our/ Shoulders was heavy" - Rilke.

There are many hours in the day that I wish larks would lift aloft the weight on my shoulders.

Snow Day

Yesterday the ice came as predicted, though the worst of it was north of here [thankfully].  The skeletal limbs looked sugar-dipped and enchanted, and I can say that because I didn't lose power.  Paducah stole the spotlight on this morning's Today Show.  That's what I mean by "just north of here" - not so far North.  Driving into Nashville was incredible with the glimmering tree lines on either side and the frosted fields and rock walls adorned with icicles as tall as them.  For part of the day I didn't have cable or internet, but that's small in comparison to some others' inconveniences.  A friend of mine spent the night in a hotel after an outage at her home, making a memorable first birthday for her daughter.  

Today the weather softened with snow, weightless wafting snow that fell momentarily so thick that it was hard to see down the block.  It makes me wish that he was here instead of cooking in the desert.  It does this so rarely in Tennessee that even as an adult, it makes me giddy and excited, and I put on boots early in the morning to go out to snap photos and stomp around in the whiteness.  Unfortunately, I can't find the cord to upload my pictures from today, but trust that they look similar to that one up top and less like the ice-encased berries that I stole from a local news website to illustrate yesterday's conditions.  

I'm making snowball cookies to commemorate the snow day he's missing, thus increasing the cheese factor but I care not.  I care package with no shame.

O MY LOVE

TONIGHT

THE SKY

IS A DARKENED CIRCUS TENT ABOVE OUR DREAMS

AND THE MOON SLOWLY WALKS A TIGHTROPE INTO MORNING.

LUCIA

Just when I thought sweet Tennessee wouldn't let me down, Winter returned quite unusually. Tonight, in fact, there are warnings of a second "ice storm" for this season. There's too much drama in that forecast, I think. It's more like, "possible inclimate weather," but you know how the news is these days. If they don't get your pulse racing, what's the point?

While I do like a justifiable excuse to spend my day in sweats doing lots and lots of nothing, I also DESPERATELY need a trim.  I'm still getting used to this small town business and having to drive an hour for a quality cut.  I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow morning that I would very much like to make.  That's Plan A.  The contingency includes icy asphalt and a trial run at soft pretzels from this new cook book  I'm so itching to break in.  They are in the line-up for one of February's care packages. [Yes, I've planned that far...and further.]  But I'd like to practice at least once before shipping off a box of failure that he has to pretend was wonderful.