Last week was eventful and the upcoming week is shaping up to be busy as well. It's the way life speeds by that gets me every time!

In the last week, we celebrated Auntie's birthday, she and I went to a Victorian tea (as the Victorians), we found out our dog is fat, John and Melody finished watching all the back episodes of Kimba, we finalized the details for Melody's birthday party, I cooked a delicious Cheddar Chicken Soup, Nano had 3 teeth pulled, Melody is increasingly stubborn about potty training, John worked about a million hours, we cleaned the spare room enough that it will soon be a guest room, and I baked for our latest soldier through Baking Gals.  Whew!

My company has announced a "get fit" program and a bunch of us at work have been walking during our lunch breaks. It's great and I really felt it the days we didn't walk due to rain. It's also fortuitous for Nano because he needs to lose 2 pounds. He's only 11 pounds but he should be 9. My little doggy is fat, lol. However, it's more serious than that. He has heart disease and something called a collapsing trachea, which causes him to cough a lot. The doctor thinks that the extra fat around his neck is pressing on his trachea and causing breathing troubles. Nothing to joke about, the dog gets less food and more walks. On top of that, poor guy had to have three molars pulled. Ouchie!

Melody's birthday is coming up next weekend, and pretty much every day, she asks "is it my birthday today!?" with such a look of excitement and eager joy that I almost want to tell her that it is her birthday, lol. I really can't wait until Saturday to be able to tell her "yes, Melody, today is your birthday!" We are planning a bouce house (weather forecast is sunny), friends, food, and a Tinkerbell cake. Thursday I will be taking her and some of her daycare buddies to the Santa Ana Zoo, along with Rhonda our babysitter. I'm really looking forward to it!

This morning, she was tired and did not want to get out of bed. She lay there watching as I was gathering clothes for her. She then told me "Mommy, I have a headache. When someone has a headache they have to rest and stay in bed." I am so not looking forward to her trying to get out of going to school! I can only conclude she got this idea of staying in bed from me, since a couple weekends ago I had a terrible migraine and stayed in bed half the day..

During some of our cleaning of our spare room, I was forced to deal with my old records. You remember those things...vinyl, big pictures on the jackets, lyrics on the inside sleeve? Yeah, so back in the late 80s and early 90s, I collected Depeche Mode records. Specifically I was addicted to British and West German imports. I'd play them once (maybe) to record the music onto a tape and then never play them again. The West German ones were all colored vinyl, beautiful royal blue, neon orange, lemon yellow. I carefully stored them in plastic sleeves to protect the jackets, and never stored them in a garage or attic. Well, this paid off - figuratively and hopefully literally! I was about to send them to Goodwill when I decided to Google "who buys Depeche Mode records" and found a dealer in England. They have made me an offer for some of these records, and that should help out a bit toward my trip to Tennessee in April.

Yowza, how could I have forgotten to mention that I booked our trip to Knoxville?? Melody and I will be visiting the Hall family at the end of April! It will be Melody's first trip on an airplane; in fact, her first trip anywhere. John of course offered to pay to have Tara come here, but I really want to go there, ha ha. I will even get the chance to see a real Civil War battlefield, AND go to Dollywood! Melody tells me "Mommy, we are going to Hollywood with Cassidy!"

This past weekend we baked for our latest soldier, CPT Steven Wisniewski. CPT Wisniewski is an Army pilot flying Apache helicopters in northern Iraq. He's young, having graduated from high school in 2001, where he participated in football, wrestling and track. He also loved the arts, participating in the school choir and drama group, National Honor Society, Latin and Spanish clubs. To balance that, he earned his Eagle Scout in Troop 101 in Ohio. CPT Wisniewski went on to Ohio State University where he earned his degree in Engineering with an emphasis on Industrial Design & Systems Engineering. Wow. For this very worthy soldier, we made Cinnabon cookies, merengues, and heart shaped oreos. I hope to get in one more batch of white chocolate chip cranberry cookies and ship this all before the weekend. It won't reach him by Valentine's Day, but I hope he will know we are thinking of him and wishing him and his buddies a safe and happy Valentine's Day.

CPL Wisniewski reminds me a little bit of my cousin George. He has the same zest for life, a few of the same interests - choir, flying, sports - and was also from Ohio. Every part of my being asks that George watch out over this young soldier and keep him safe.

We have been doing a lot of cleaning, getting rid of, donating. One group that has gotten all of our gently used baby gear is a support group for the families of deployed Marines out of Camp Pendleton. I recently received a sweet thank you note from a young lady who took a bus from Corona to Irvine in order to collect my old Pack N Play and high chair. The families of our deployed military suffer so much, it makes my heart break. Having seen some of my friends go through the struggles of being wives of deployed military, I am happy to give up the things we don't need to someone who needs them so much. The support group is like a Goodwill, but the family pays nothing. If you find it in your heart to make a donation to any organization that helps out like this, please consider it. It makes a big difference!

Am I the only driver in California that can do this? I have a pet peeve about one teensy einsy little thing about driving on California streets.

RIGHT TO RIGHT, LEFT TO LEFT

When I went through drivers' training back in the 80s, we were taught that when making turns, you turn from the right lane into the corresponding right lane, and from the left lane into the corresponding left lane.

Numerous times in the last few weeks, I have been practically run off the road by people turning wide on a left turn, or hit head on as I'm approaching a stop sign and someone cuts their left turn across my lane, and almost every day a woman swings her big SUV wide on her right turn almost mashing my little car. Every day she gives ME the same dirty look that says "how dare you get in my way," when in fact it'd HER fault if we were ever to collide. Granted, things may have changed since I took my last drivers' test, but I just checked the California DMV handbook and it still says to turn this way for the most part. There's even some cute little pictures!

Okay, I had to draw on the arrows because the image files from the DMV handbook are layered. And with my limited resources, this is amazingly good!

So there it is. Carry on.

But don't carry on turning wide or cutting corners.

You know what I mean.

i can't seem to keep up, life is just flying by at the speed of toddler! We are quickly winding down January and getting ready for Melody's (gulp!) third birthday. Wow!!

Yesterday, we stopped at the grocery store after work for some sundries and milk. There was a lady there handing out tastes of the cookies the bakery had just made. She likes Melody and gave her several tastes in a little cup to enjoy as we finished our shopping. On the way home, Melody and I discussed this.

Melody: The cookie lady is nice.

Mom: Yes, she gave you some treats.

Melody: She likes to give out the cookies.

Mom: I'm sure she does when sweet little girls say 'thank you.'

Melody: She likes to be the cookie lady.

Mom: Mmmhmm

Melody: I like to be the cookie eater.

Mom: Uncontrollable laughter

First let me preface this with "I am not writing about some so-called housewives who have a TV show and purport themselves to be real by any definition of the word."

So, one of my new favorite TV shows is called Criminal Minds. Those of you who know me well will be surprised because I usually eschew "fake" crime shows. I'm more of a First 48 girl, myself, but this show is somehow enjoyable. I also used to love Profiler, which was basically the same premise. Criminal Minds is about a team of FBI Behavior Analisis Unit (BAU) profilers who save the day almost every episode. The writers are smart enough to have them win almost all the time, but still have room for humility. I record the show on our DVR and watch three or four in a row whenever I can.

During a recent marathon, one episode made me laugh right out loud for it's complete lack of understanding of Orange County and just how we do things here. The storyline went like this "normal middle aged father of three completely loses his mind after the death of his child and starts shooting blond women driving luxury cars, at random locations on Orange County freeways." Now, wanting to annihilate a snooty lady in her luxury car cutting me off on a freeway is something I can totally relate to, but here's where it got really funny.

The guy would drive around looking for construction zones on the freeway, and drive through them repeatedly until someone meeting his requirements (snooty blonde in a luxury car), cut him off. He would then follow her and blast her with a sawed off through the window, resulting in her death. Anyone who has lived in Orange County for more than thirty seconds knows there are far too many snooty blonde women in luxury cars out there to necessitate driving through a construction zone repeatedly before one cuts you off. That's just a result of the socio-economic make up of the OC. Secondly, have they seen the back-up created by these merged lanes?  It would take him hours and hours to drive through repeadtedly and anyone in OC knows that is almost more annoying than getting cut off.  Finally, in order to catch this guy, they closed down all the construction areas that required a lane merge except one. In all of OC. Really? Have they even noticed that construction in OC is occurring on almost every freeway and highway and major thoroughfare in existence in our fair county? AND, how could they have gotten CalTrans to respond in record time, pulling crews and rearranging traffic patterns in a matter of hours? Realizing this is just a TV show with fake FBI members and even with suspension of disbelief, I just cannot buy CalTrans doing anything in a matter of hours, as opposed to the standard matter of weeks.

As testimony to how messed up OC freeways are, the freeway chase scenes were actually shot in Long Beach. Obviously, LA County must have a better relationship with film makers, and also the ability to close down lanes of traffic quickly to facilitate filming, and aprehension of violent but normal looking serial freeway shooters.

However, I'll grant that this scenario is more interesting than "normal middle aged father of three completely loses his mind driving in OC rush hour on the 405 creeping along at 10 mph" and yeah, that chase scene would be pretty boring, although I'd love to see some CHiPs running along side a car in rush hour to catch the bad guy. But that's a story for Reno 911.

I can only hope that when I have been married to John for 62 years we will be in as good of shape physically and mentally! The way the story goes, this is Francis and Marlow Cowan, who on a visit to the Mayo Clinic, found a piano in the atrium and busted out this impromptu duet of The Old Gray Bonnet. Oh, and he turned 90 in February 2008!

A couple months later, one of their friends told them he had seen the clip on YouTube and that it was very popular! Francis and Marlow then recorded this clip explaining how the original clip had come to be. They are a really sweet couple, you gotta love 'em!