On Being a Girl

Here I am deep in behavioral analysis, when Skip sees a comercial for a Venus razor.
 
"Do you like being a lulu (his word for girls)," he asks.

"Yeah, I'd rather be a girl than a guy." I reply.

"Why?"

So I launched into the obivious. How guys stink, and they don't even care that they stink, and I'm not sure I want to regress into a primate. That as a girl I have emotional capabilities that look like science fiction to them. That I can rely on faith for things that aren't tangible and easily manipulated. Oh and did I mention the cute clothes? Plus I feel that women are the superior sex.

Skip stared at me, refuting each claim on the basis of "If you were a guy you wouldn't care about that."

I thought for a minute and concluded, "It would be cool to pee standing up, but it's nice to know that I don't have to think about sex all day every day and therefore can accomplish tasks on a regular basis. Oh, and that means I'm ready to live all by myself, just like a big kid."

Skip rolled this over in his head, forgot that he was eating and I saw a light bulb flash above his head.

"THAT makes sense," he decided, nodding his head.

Saints and Lovers

With a proclaimed day of love approaching I've been reading articles on planning a perfect Valentine's Day. Mostly this is just fun entertainment for me—any real planning causes panic; I don't expect to be doing any of it. While reading these great articles I noticed how many people caustically wrote that we don't need a holiday to do something nice for a loved one. That it's a Hallmark tradition meant to bleed wallets. In general a slight disgust for the holiday they try to promote with ideas of gifts, rendezvous, date activities and romantic dinners.

I decided that in honor of my first Valentine's marriaged to Gripper, and in honor of Vegas Stacey who L-O-V-E-S this day, I would stick up for the Saint who risked his life to marry lovers. Though the Roman Emperor decreed marriage illegal during time of war (he believed men without families were better soldiers), Bishop Valentine married couples in secret, and was executed for it.

Maybe Valentine's isn't such a rip-off. Maybe it's a day to appreciate marriage, your spouse (present, past or future) and believe in a binding love.

The chocolates, candy conversation hearts and possible flowers? Party favors.



More Valentine's trivia:
http://www.sheknows.com/holidays-and-seasons/articles/807655/fun-facts-about-valentine-s-day

Thundersnow

I fully expect this post to blow your mind. It begins at my office on Monday morning when the girls start exclaiming, "The storm has begun."

Me? I had no idea we were in need of a storm. Actually I was planning this whole clean-the-house-before-picking-up-skip thing. And no where in there do you read snow or storm. A couple hours later when my home visit canceled I just knew I would accomplish the cleaning thing and be in the clear. Oh wait. Did I mention that the storm was supposed to get worse and lock down loomed? I didn't because I didn't believe it. I went home, took a nap, cleaned a little, talked to Skip (whose flight was delayed a bit) and finally he convinced me to prepare for the storm.

Whoops. Everyone had cleaned out the basics. No bread, no milk, no OJ, no bananas, no potatoes, no anything unless you're a big fan of taco flavored Doritos. Those they had. So I bought some Capt'n Crunch and called it good. Then I went home, switched cars so I'd have 4-wheel capabilities and took off to the airport.

I forgot my written directions and managed to miss a turn and drive by the little airport. After a couple off-road illegal turns (one in front of a cop) I corrected my error and made it to the boy. The boy whose luggage had missed the flight. What do you do in an empty snowstorm airport when your luggage disappeared? I'm not sure but your wife sits in the car counting the inches of snow on the windshield.

Fine, it wasn't that bad yet, but I don't see well at night so it appeared to be much worse. We made it home, somehow. I have yet to take the same route anywhere here. And we laughed at the "storm". Then the morning came and we laughed some more. Two hours later we started to wonder. And then we realized that we'd have to FJ through the snow to get to WalMart (which stated that they would not close at all) to pick up a few essentials. Like some canned goods, fresh fruit, and toilet paper. I didn't want to be unprepared there. After coming home with red hots and chocolates we settled in for a good time.

The snow didn't seem like much but the wind fiercely blew and created amazing drifts around our window, cars, trees and the tree limbs that had broken off. And in the midst of Skip opening the door every three minutes to check out the blizzard we saw a bright flash and heard a long loud rumble, thundersnow had arrived. Kind of awesome. Even better that we didn't really believe it, especially me, until I read in the paper that lightening struck the emergency center and all their equipment rendered useless for the storm.

By now you're wondering if I'm writing this from the grave. I am not. Other than the lightening and thunder our street and town missed any crazy happenings. In fact the next day Skip dug out our driveway in a record ten minutes while I built a lounge snowchair on our porch. Then we FJ'd down the road and through the foot of snow at a friend's house.

P.S. Illinois snow hurts. I dove into it and the ice felt like little blasts of glass embedded in my skin. Not the fluffy fun at the ski resorts.