Day to Day

We woke up to a dusting of snow.

It snowed, lightly, a few days ago, too.

A few days before that, it snowed a couple of inches.

Since JMP left, there’s pretty much been frozen slushie snowy mess on my front deck.

I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Of course you didn’t, because I’ve taken pretty much ZERO snow photos since JMP left.

Four four years I took a photo of my front deck any time it had even a wee bit of snow and now, in our fifth winter, I’ve pretty much given up.

Is it because we’ve had so little snow that I’ve gotten out of practice?

Is it because I’ve become desensitized by the snow. It’s just another day, ho hum?

Am I bored with the whole idea of snow photos?

Or has the weather just beaten me into submission?

I think it’s probably a combination of all of those things. With 3 1/2 years left here, I’m pretty sure you’ll see quite a few more snow photos from me before I’m done — but I guess it won’t be every day. I just don’t have it in my to do it.

Stupid snow.

A couple of nights ago, TW was stalking reading my blog and said, “You missed a day!” I growled and told her that I had not missed a day — Bluehost was down so I blogged to Posterous, which would normally have auto-crossposted here — but Bluehost was down, so it didn’t.

I did blog that day.

The night that she was stalking my blog, I didn’t blog here at all. Or on Posterous either. But, I didn’t miss a day. I blogged on BlogHer.com.

I sat at my desk that day, for a good long while, trying to decide whether it was important that I blog HERE everyday or whether it was just important that I write something — somewhere.

I decided it was the latter and I just shut down my computer and let it go.

A couple of days later, I’m still ok with that decision.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be days when I blog in more than one place. It really just means that I want to blog more often — somewhere, anywhere, not just HERE in THIS space. I should really work harder on spreading the writing around. Crazy in Chicago? Johnny Mac Pippin? Prairie Dog Digest? All of those could use some attention. Or, I need to retire them.

All of this might be my way of saying that I really need to get back to work on that blogging calendar I was working on in January and let go because I didn’t think I needed it. Or because I convinced myself I didn’t need it. Someone remind me to stop taking shortcuts and just DO IT.

I changed TWO dirty diapers today!

We read two books on my iPhone and they made us laugh.

We visited honorary Grandma Joy and that was lots of fun — we love coming home smelling of Joy. It makes us happy. Very happy.

We watched Barney. We love that big purple dinosaur.

Someone ate organic bananas and liked them — someone also let the puppy lick them off his fingers, which made the puppy happy.

Michelle will be here in about an hour.

Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be a good day, too.

I was sitting at my desk this morning, reading blog posts, looking for spam, doing all of the things I do every morning (even though it’s an official holiday) when I smelled something burning. I mean I really smelled something burning.

The laundry room is right next to my office and both the washer and dryer were going, (I almost always do some sort of laundry first thing in the morning, while I boot up my laptop and make a cup of coffee.)

I got up and turned off both the washer and the dryer and sniffed a bit, thinking it must be my imagination. But no. Something was definitely burning.

I called TW in to help me investigate — we looked around the dryer. TW cleaned the lint duct. I looked outside. I opened up the basement hatch and looked out there. TW sniffed around her mother’s room (which shares a wall with the wall the dryer is on.) I wandered upstairs to sniff around the attic. It really only smelled like burning yukkiness in the laundry room — and strongly in and around the dryer.

Hell.

I got so distracted by the idea that the house might be on fire that I never opened Outlook… at least not til almost 3:30 in the afternoon.

The landlord, I love that guy, came over tonight and discovered — yes, there was definitely some fire stuff going on in there — and he brought us a new dryer. It’s not hooked up yet, because he needs a different gas attachment thingy and a new lint duct thingy, but it’s here and tomorrow it will be all ready for me to finish drying the load I started today.

And for me to do the thirteen other loads that are waiting.

Besides the catching the house on fire thing, we spent most of our day cleaning the laundry room/stockpile room, Prince J’s room, and the kitchen cabinets. We spent HOURS on this and there’s still tons more to do, just in those three rooms. Gah. I don’t even want to think about the girls’ rooms upstairs — talk about a MESS.

I guess we can work on those on President’s Day — and maybe I won’t open my email until 8pm on that holiday…

Sitting here drumming my fingers against the desk and reloading Facebook/Twitter/BlogHer do not help me come up with something to blog. Neither does looking at my saved drafts or my Evernote tab of partially written posts. Doing those things makes me wonder why I’m so determined to keep doing this daily blogging thing. Which led me to the kitchen to clean up the dinner dishes which led me to a topic. Neat!

Here are the things I’ve learned about blogging since I forced myself to commit to this monthly blogging thing.

1) A blogging calendar/plan is a good thing.

2) A blogging calendar/plan is a good thing only if you make the time to blog what you’ve planned.

3) Trying to blog after 12/14/16 hours of work and/or family life is not a great idea.

4) All six of my kids provide great blogging material on an almost daily basis — too bad I can’t actually blog all of this stuff.

5) Coming up with lists of things you’ve learned is easier when you’re loading the dishwasher than when you’re actually sitting in front of your computer.

6) Having a spacebar that sticks every time you touch it does not make blogging easier — I’ve got to fix this, or buy a new computer. ASAP. (And not just for blogging, it’s hard to work with a sticky spacebar, too.)

7) BlogHer didn’t kill my blog — Facebook helped. Maybe kill isn’t the write word, since I am here blogging and some people do read these posts. Maimed it?

8) Kill might be too strong of word, since I’m sitting here blogging and some people do read these posts. Maimed it?

9) I should never count on finishing a book on a certain day so that I can blog it on a certain day. That’s a sure-fire way of finding myself with 150 pages left to read on the day I would have sworn I’d be book blogging.

10) When I blog regularly, I get more spam comments — and I notice them more — and that means I have to clean them up CONSTANTLY. I have an illness that prevents me from allowing spam to sit, even in an unpublished spam queue, for more than a few hours (unless I’m asleep.)

Well. That was actually more interesting (to me) than I thought it was going to be when I started typing. Maybe I really have learned some thing in the last 79 days.

I really hate it when you’re having a perfectly fine day and then POOF, it’s turned into one of the most horrible days EVER.

But then, you get some news that is the most AWESOME NEWS EVER.

How do you work with that?

Horribly sad and angry and just exhausted by the bad stuff in the world but filled with joy and excitement about the awesome things happening.

It’s the kind of yo-yo that I really hate. I mean really.

Not that I didn’t want to hear good, happy things — particularly this good, happy thing.

But, it’s hard to really enjoy it when you’re sad.

And none of this makes any sense, but that’s what my day was like, today.