Just a quick post to let everyone know our power was restored last night at 10:30pm! We have lights and heat!
Phone and Internet access will be restored on Wednesday, so I’m still hangin’ out at my favorite Barnes and Noble store ’til then. But that’s ok - they’ve got good coffee here.

I was headed back here to Barnes & Noble yesterday evening to get online for awhile and let my toes thaw out after a day of cutting up fallen tree limbs in the snow when my cell phone rang. It was my dad telling me that my mom was in an ambulance headed to the [...]

Well, I declared that back on June 21, 1981 when I was shanghaied and dumped moved here. But I was 17 at the time and had a bad attitude.
And as I’ve stated before, I’ve had plenty of time to leave, so I try to keep my disparaging remarks to a minimum. But this declaration does [...]

This is a picture of my neighbor’s front yard. Lovely, huh?
It was gorgeous Sunday night. See that street light at the right edge of the picture? The light from it shining through the ice-covered branches of what once was pretty tree made it sparkle like a crystal Christmas tree ornament.
Now…not so much. The saddest [...]

No sooner than I get that last post posted, but our power went out. Not all that surprising - irritating, yes, surprising? No.
Second Son and I called it a night and went to bed. I saw and heard the power try to come back on somewhere just before dawn, so I went back to sleep [...]

Normally, pink is pretty.
But in the winter in Oklahoma, it’s the last thing you want to see on a weather map. Unless, of course, you’re a school age kid - then it depends on just how much pink you see.
On a weather map, pink means ice.
Pink is good because schools tend to close when the [...]

You may have noticed a sponsored post the other day. Well, yes - I decided to sign up for PayPerPost and make money while I’m blogging.
In our offline lives, we walk around with company logos on our t-shirts, drive vehicles with logos on them - and 99% of the time, WE PAID for the item [...]

The other day, I mentioned IzzyMom’s Consumer Culture and Kids post reminded me that I struggle with a similar issue related to Christmas and it’s been on my mind again this year. The issue is the consumerization of Christmas.
Each year, I get more and more pissed off with the social pressure to spend, spend, spend [...]

I only WISH I appeared this calm, cool and collected to my students this morning!
It was…one of THOSE mornings…
I had woken up at 5:30am, glanced at the clock, and happily turned over and burrowed back under the covers for another hour of slumber.
Not 30 seconds later, I swear, I opened my eyes to: 8:28 staring [...]

…but, Oldest Son called me at 1am. I answer, feigning sleep (I was right here, reading blogs, but he doesn’t need to know that.)
Immediately, I hear him let out a string of expletives that would make even a sailor blush.
No, not at me. At the girl with whom he spent the weekend (with whom he [...]