2:18 – Leave for base hospital. Drive should take 25 minutes in normal traffic.

3:08 – After finding a parking space, putting up sunshade in futile attempt to keep interior temperature of the minivan from reaching 100F, jogging across parking lot and into hospital, and taking elevator up three floors, arrive eight minutes late for 3:00 appointment.

3:20 – Go with nurse to get weight, blood pressure, etc. Back to waiting room to read books to Annalie.

3:42 – Finally called back to see doctor. Same friendly nurse shows us to exam room and promises doctor will be there shortly. Ask if I have time to pee first, am assured that I do.

3:45 – After returning to exam room, nurse peeks her head in door, apologetically explains that the doctor wants to do a urine dip*, and asks if I have any pee left in me at all. Magical pregnancy superpower #8: always being able to pee, even if you just went three minutes ago.

*Up to this point, the doctor had never wanted to do that particular test. I’d asked at every previous visit before using the restroom. Of course this is the one visit I didn’t ask first.

3:50 – Doctor comes in, introduces himself* to me and Annalie. Measures my belly, listens to baby’s heartbeat, asks a few questions. Assures me everything looks good, says they’ll see me in four weeks.

*I had to reschedule an appointment, and my regular OB was unavailable.

4:00 – Check waiting area in pharmacy. Doesn’t look too bad. Decide to take number in order to ask question about refilling prescription. Only seven more people before number is called. Man, it’s hot in here. Air-conditioning seems to be on the fritz. Yes, Annalie, I’m hot too. Yes, I know you’re hungry. Here, have a granola bar, and hang in there. It will be our turn soon.

4:05 – Half the pharmacy windows close. Line moves much more slowly. Annalie amuses self and people sitting nearby with old cell phone that can still take photos. She takes photos of Red Cross sign, her feet, pattern on my shirt, slip of paper with number on it.

4:55 – Number finally comes up. Prescription filled quickly and with minimum fuss. Yay! Head out to minivan.

5:00 – Leave parking lot. Wonder how long it will take to drive mile to base gate at this time of day. Share second granola bar with Annalie. Drive s-l-o-w-l-y towards gate with rest of people leaving base.

5:15 – Drive out gate and onto highway.

5:30 – Find non-fast-food restaurant to eat dinner and wait out worst of rush-hour traffic. Annalie is tired and hungry and falling totally apart because she wanted fast food with a playland. And her shoes hurt. And she wants to go home so she can swim. I explain getting home right now would take at least an hour at this time of day. Might as well eat dinner first. She allows herself to be dragged into restaurant, where she loads her plate at salad bar with broccoli, peas, garbanzo beans, black olives, chopped ham, and grapes. She cheerfully devours it all, plus seconds of ham and grapes.

6:05 – Driving out of restaurant parking lot, I spot Payless Shoesource in adjacent strip mall and suggest we kill more time there. Annalie immediately agrees; she loves trying on shoes.

6:20 – Nothing we wanted to buy at shoe store, so we stroll down mall to TJ Maxx, where we find no children’s shoes but lots of cute outfits for Baby, Annalie, and Aurora. Annalie looks at toys while I narrow down pile to one clearance item each for Baby and Aurora; one clearance skirt and one clearance swimsuit* for Annalie. Before we pay, Annalie shows me a toy and asks if she can get it. I say no, not unless you get rid of five toys you already have at home. She sighs and returns toy to shelf without further argument. I make mental note to remember that comeback.

*Annalie has suddenly outgrown all her tank swimsuits from last year, even though they fit her at the beginning of summer. I think she’s grown another inch in the past month.

6:40 – One last stop at Walgreens to look for cheap flip-flops for Annalie. Instead find cheap fake Crocs. Also find candy bars on sale and pick up half-dozen, planning to eat one on drive home, save rest for later. Go stand in line at register.

6:55 – Still standing in line, which now has seven people in it. Long line for a drugstore. Someone announces cosmetics counter open, whole line shuffles over there to pay. Leave store, walking past same woman at original register, still arguing with manager.

7:00 – At last, driving home. Traffic is still heavy but moving briskly. Take slightly different route home to avoid construction delays. Spot no fewer than five vehicles driving along with left turn signals blinking steadily away despite no apparent desire to turn or merge. Wonder if it was Leave Your Left Turn Signal On Day or something.

7:25 – Arrive home. Whew.

Can you tell how hot and sweaty I was when I took this photo? We just bought a new inflatable pool at Target that we thought was similar to the big green round pool we had last summer in San Diego. Well, we were wrong.

This one doesn’t have a bench in it, it doesn’t have nifty cupholders in the sides, and worst of all IT DOESN’T HAVE A DRAIN IN THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL. How ridiculous is that!? To empty the 3-day-old cruddy water I had to stand on the side, balancing very precariously, so the gross water and dead bugs and leaves and grass could flow out over my feet. It was far too heavy for me to pick up and dump without ripping the plastic till it was nearly empty, which I only realized after struggling with the half-empty pool for several minutes. Hence me being hot and sweaty and annoyed. And in this photo you can’t even see my rolled-up splashed-with-gross-water pants.

At least Annalie had fun swimming once it was emptied, rinsed, and refilled! Now I’m wondering why I didn’t just put on my swimsuit and join her.

This was another shot I rejected because I felt it did not accurately portray the level of my annoyance.

This isn’t really related to my 7 Days shot at all, except that I was standing on the deck when I took it. I just thought I’d share how unbalanced our deck looks right now.

See that big tree on the left, the one that hangs over part of our deck and house? It’s been dead for a couple of years, and we were told that it would be cut down soon after we moved in. Well, the guy who does maintenance on our rental house is a general contractor and a friend of the owners. He does good work, but he does it on his schedule. He told us a couple of weeks ago that he would be by “on Thursday” to cut down the dead tree. We moved our deck furniture and container garden over to the other side of the deck so they wouldn’t get inadvertently crushed. Apparently something came up, because no one ever showed up to cut the tree, and we have not heard from the maintenance guy. But we don’t want to move all our stuff back because the minute we do he’ll show up and we’ll have to move it all back.

Hey, wait…maybe we should move our stuff back, and then he’d show up to get rid of the tree.

We’ve had a rather rough few days around here. It hasn’t been all bad, we’ve had plenty of storytelling and tickling and other pleasant interactions. But we’ve also had way more than our usual share of time-outs and dicussions about why it’s not okay to disobey your mother, or to speak rudely, or to throw books, or to hit. We’ve talked about how it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to say, “I’m really angry about this,” but it’s not okay to lose your temper and take your anger out on the people around you.

I don’t think there’s any particular reason Annalie has been testing limits lately. She’s been eating and sleeping normally. Our routine is settling back down after travels and houseguests and sickness, so that’s probably part of it. I think it’s mostly just one of those things that kids do from time to time, checking to see if all the rules are still the same. Or maybe God thought I hadn’t been challenged enough lately. Who knows.

In any case, today was Annalie’s half-birthday—that is, the day she turned 5 1/2. My piano teacher’s family used to celebrate half-birthdays with half a cake, just for fun. Troy and I have celebrated each other’s half-birthdays a few times over the years (mine is 9/11, which has a whole new meaning the past eight years), when we’ve been apart on our actual birthdays. Today I decided to surprise Annalie with a half-cake because I thought we could use a fun surprise.

I tried to be sneaky about it. When I was in the kitchen cleaning up and Annalie was upstairs drawing and watching Cyberchase, I whipped up a small one-layer lemon cake as quietly as I could. I didn’t use my big stand mixer because I figured Annalie might hear it. While it was baking, I went back upstairs and played a game of UNO with Annalie, then went back downstairs to take out the trash and recycling, and take the cake out of the oven and make some frosting.

I discovered I could not make the frosting without using the stand mixer. Sure enough, within two seconds of turning it on, I heard Annalie jump off the couch and come clattering downstairs. I flicked the mixer off, met Annalie in the kitchen doorway and said, “You can’t come in! It’s a surprise for you and it’s not ready yet.”

Annalie grinned and asked, “Is it cake? It smells like lemon cake!”

“It’s a surprise, that’s all I’m saying. Can you please stay upstairs for a few more minutes? And not try to sneak into the kitchen? I really want it to be a fun surprise,” I answered.

Annalie, still grinning, replied, “Okay, Mama! I won’t try to sneak down, I promise.” Then, true to her word, she went back upstairs and stayed put till I was done assembling and frosting the cake. I was quite proud of her for that.

When I went upstairs to tell her she could come down and see her surprise, she fairly flew down the stairs, then giggled with delight when she saw the cake. I asked her if she knew why I made her half a cake. She didn’t, so I told her that today was her half-birthday, that today she was officially 5 1/2 years old. She laughed, then ran to get plates and forks.

We put candles in the cake, I sang to her, we took a photo for Troy, and she blew out her candles. We had tall glasses of milk and lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting for dinner. Annalie smiled and chattered nonstop the whole time, and gave me about 17 hugs and kisses while we were eating and talking about the fact that now she’s closer to being six than she is to five.

After dinner we turned on the Christmas lights still strung on our house and in the lemon tree, and went outside to play a game Annalie invented, called “Look, Gramaw sent me a care package!” Annalie put a bunch of stuffed animals and her Halloween candy in a big box, wrote “Gramaw” for the return address and scribbled fake cursive lines for the delivery address, and set it outside the sliding glass door. Then we came inside and went back outside, pretending to be surprised by the big box on the patio. Annalie spent a good 15 minutes exclaiming over the box’s contents and naming each of her “new” stuffed animals. She put the candy back in her Halloween pumpkin, saying she didn’t want any candy right then, since she’d just eaten cake. Very sensible of her, I thought.

Right before bedtime, Annalie almost lost it because she wanted to take a shower upstairs, not downstairs. I’d already switched from a bath to a shower because she insisted that she’d told me she wanted a shower (even though she had told me she wanted a bath), and didn’t feel like switching bathrooms. I told her that she could have a shower upstairs tomorrow, but tonight we were staying downstairs. Oh, the drama. Then she yelled at me because I grabbed the wrong cupcake pajamas from her dresser, she wanted the shorts ones, not the stupid long pants ones! Cue me counting to ten under my breath and saying a prayer for patience.

Compared to the defiance I’ve been dealing with in the past few days, this evening was actually pretty mild. I stayed calm and offered Annalie the choice between downstairs shower or going to bed early, and she backed down, grumbling, and even offered an apology for yelling at me. After her shower we were talking about the fact that when a grown-up says, “This is what we’re doing,” it’s not okay for a kid to yell just because they don’t like what the grown-up said. I asked Annalie why she thought she’d been having so much trouble controlling her temper the last few days, and she shook her head and said, “I just don’t know, Mom! It’s a mystery.”

Maybe it’s just because she’s 5 1/2 now. Life does get more complicated as you get older. I won’t make the mistake of thinking that a 5 1/2-year-old can’t be troubled or worried. I remember being 5 1/2, and in my experience childhood was not all gumdrops and roses. I guess all Troy and I can do is love her, teach her, guide her, give her as much freedom as we safely can, and surprise her with the occasional half-birthday cake.

Annalie is going through a bit of a testing phase right now, as kids do from time to time, just to make sure the grown-ups are paying attention. Lately she’s been testing the rules, testing the boundaries of good behavior, and testing my patience. It’s frustrating but normal.

Considering the testing, I shouldn’t have been that surprised the other day when I found a smiley face the size of a quarter drawn on our couch in marker. I was surprised, though. Annalie has been using washable markers since she was a toddler, and she’s always been pretty good about using them only on paper or other approved surfaces. Occasionally she goes a bit crazy and draws all over her legs or arms, but that’s generally allowed in our house because hey, washable.

After I saw the markered smiley face, I called Annalie upstairs and asked her to tell me about it. She admitted to having done it almost immediately. I told her I was disappointed because she’s old enough to know that drawing on the furniture is never okay. She shrugged and said she was sorry, but the flippant way she did so only made me hotter under the collar.

I struggled to maintain my temper as I had her help me clean up the marker. I also explained that the consequences of not remembering the rules about where to use markers meant she was going to lose her markers for the next couple of days. She wasn’t very happy about that, because I had just bought her a cool new marker set, but she sighed and said she understood.

Then I told her, “I’m really quite upset about this, Annalie. I don’t understand why you deliberately did something that you know is against the rules. I think you might have an extra punishment, but I’m going to have to think about it for a while.” Again she shrugged, before asking if she could have something to eat.

After I fixed her a snack, I emailed Troy to tell him about the Markering Incident and to ask if he had any ideas. I didn’t really expect to hear back from him anytime soon, since he’s basically on the opposite schedule from us on the other side of the world right now, but I felt better once I wrote it all out. Then I took to Twitter and asked if anyone had any thoughts or advice for me.

Almost everyone who answered me suggested that I have her clean it up and take away the markers, both of which I’d already done. At least I felt reassured in those actions. I still felt like this was something that warranted further action, like it was a no-brainer rule that she had to have deliberately broken. After consideration, I decided to have her go to bed an hour early. Annalie hates going to bed early, so I thought it would have an impact. Also, she’d had a busy couple of days and I figured she probably did need the extra sleep.

When I told Annalie that as punishment for markering on the couch she would have an early bedtime, she immediately wailed, “Oh, WHEN will you stop PUNISHING ME!?” I stifled a laugh at her melodramatic response and told her that we’d still read and cuddle before she went to sleep, it was just going to be an hour earlier than normal. She grumbled a bit, but when we finished a chapter of Little House in the Big Woods and I turned off the light, she curled into me and was fast asleep in about two minutes flat.

Yesterday I gave her the markers back and reminded her of the rules. She immediately said, “I know, only on paper. I’ll remember this time.” And she did. She was drawing on her little pad of paper on and off all day yesterday with those markers, and we never had a problem. I breathed a little easier.

This afternoon Bonnie had invited us to a homeschoolers’ knitting group/playgroup. We were both looking forward to it. Annalie had been sniffling and sneezing the past couple of days with a little cold, so we’d been sticking close to home. Today she was feeling much better and we were both looking forward to getting out of the house. Annalie was excited about seeing M and E again, and making some new friends. I was packing up a crochet project to bring with me when I turned around and saw that Annalie had used a marker to draw on the front of her dress.

“Annalie, did you just draw on your dress with a marker?”

She glanced down at her dress, then looked back up at me sheepishly. “Yessss…”

She knew she was in trouble. I sighed, then told her to gather up all her markers and put them in the zipper case. When she was done she handed the case to me, and I told her the markers would be off-limits for a few days again since she had forgotten or ignored the rule to only draw on paper.

Annalie’s response was an almost-jaunty, “Okay, mom!”

I hesitated for a moment. I knew what I had to do. I wanted to get the message across to my little boundary-tester that it was NOT okay to marker on anything but paper. The most immediate way to do that was…

“Annalie, I’m really sorry, but we’re not going to be able to go to the playgroup now.”

Her face crumpled. “What!? But I wanted to go meet some new friends! I haven’t gone to a playgroup since we lived in Maryland and I really want to go to this one!”

That nearly broke my heart. Sometimes I hate having to be consistent. Especially times like this when punishing Annalie meant punishing me too. I’d really been looking forward to that knitting group. But from her reaction I knew I’d done the right thing. I told her that I knew she really wanted to go, but I also knew that she knew the rules about markers. I said I hoped that the next time she was tempted to draw on her clothes or the couch or anything else but paper, she would remember how sad she was to miss out on the playgroup this week. I assured her that we could still go next week.

Annalie’s sadness quickly morphed into anger. She stomped off to her room, declaring her need for private time and her intention to never ever go anywhere again with me. I rolled my eyes and privately debated keeping the markers put away at least till after next week’s knitting group.

A few minutes later, Annalie called to me from her room. I went downstairs and stood in the doorway. She was busy playing with an electronic game and didn’t even notice me at first. When she did look up, she asked if I could bring the book down to her room and read to her for a while.

We spent an hour or so lying on her bed, me reading the rest of our book out loud while she quietly played, occasionally snuggling up next to me to study an illustration of Ma and Laura making cheese, or Pa watching a doe and her yearling fawn from his perch in a tree. When the book was finished, Annalie asked if she could swim, so we filled up the pool and she swam and splashed for a good hour while I read and made notes on something I’m editing for a friend.

We ran some errands: the craft store, the grocery store, Starbucks. Back at home Annalie put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, and we watched an episode of Chuck at Annalie’s request. We sat on my bed as I read two chapters of Little House on the Prairie while Annalie pretended to wash and cut my hair. I turned out the light and Annalie twined her legs and arms around me, her head pillowed on my arm, just as she’s done since she was a baby. She requested sleepily that I sing to her.

Despite the Second Markering Incident, it was a good day.

My mom flew back home a couple of days ago. It was wonderful to have her here for so long during the first part of Troy’s long deployment. After a farewell lunch at In-N-Out, we took her to the airport and hugged and kissed her good-bye. Luckily her flights home were uneventful. We miss you already, Mom!

As I mentioned before, when Joe & Kassie were here, Brenda and I took them to paint pottery. Kassie requested a dottery lesson, which was kind of funny, because Brenda and I had been scheming up a How-to-Paint-Dottery post, complete with step-by-step photos. That’ll be coming soon, I hope.

Joe used masking tape and created a pretty cool—and very manly—mug.

Kassie did a great job on her dottery mug, I think! As she said, it sorta looks like fireworks. I love the colors.

Brenda painted this little bowl to use as a water dish when she’s painting. Adorable.

I, on the other hand, had the weirdest day of painting ever. For some reason, everything was just slightly off with me that day. I had the idea to paint this little bowl like an orange, and it wasn’t working like I’d envisioned. I was struggling with the paint (my pottery studio recently switched brands of paint, and I’m still getting used to the new stuff which just acts different than the old stuff) and getting all frustrated. I jokingly called it “the doomed orange.”

Brenda had already finished her pieces, so she offered to finish the last coat of orange and paint the details in for me. I gladly handed it over to her. (It turned out better than I expected it to, mostly because of Brenda’s help, I’m sure.) I decided to paint some dottery. At least there, I know what I’m doing. Right?

Hmm, not so much. I chose pinks and oranges, but these new paints are slightly different colors than the old ones. And these new paints are funky before they’re fired…two of the pinks I used looked decidedly purple as I was painting, which was weird. Then I made a mistake on one of the circles and decided to just go with it, switching up the design and then ending with random dots in the remaining white spaces. Now I know there’s a reason I stick with the same design over and over again, because I do not like the way it turned out at all. Like I said, it was a weird day. Oh well, next time will be better.

At least my crocheting’s going well! I made this green, turquoise, and blue blanket for Erin’s brand-new nephew Christian. Isn’t he cute!?

Christian’s parents are Erin’s big brother Shawn and his wife Carissa. Here’s a funny story about Shawn: I transferred to North at the beginning of 10th grade and didn’t really know anyone. Erin and I had the same homeroom and the same lunch period, so we ended up eating together with two or three freshman girls…and this guy with long black hair and a scraggly mustache. I had no idea why this guy was eating lunch with a bunch of 9th- and 10th-grade girls, but everyone seemed to know him, and he was nice enough if a bit gross, so I just went with it. About two months into the school year, he was messing with Erin one day and she said, “Man, you’re gonna be in so much trouble when I tell Mom!”

Suddenly it all clicked and I blurted out, “Oh! Shawn is your BROTHER!” I got identical weird looks from Erin and Shawn before they started laughing. Shawn said I must’ve thought he was some kind of perv, eating lunch with a bunch of girls four years younger than him. I still laugh when I think about that.

And now that I’m done with Erin’s nephew’s blanket, I’ll be starting another. My brother and his fiancee are expecting their first baby in mid-November…my very first niece!

I am not feeling very inspired so far during this week of 7 Days. I think that’s partly because I’ve been scrambling to get Christmas-related stuff done and have hardly had any time to spend online. I’ve fallen way behind in commenting on everyone else’s 7 Days photos. And I still have a to-do list a mile long. On top of everything else, just as I am finally getting rid of the cough I’ve had for three weeks, I am getting a sore throat. Just…great.

Oh well. At least the lights look pretty. And I’ll live. Hand me the Zicam, will you? I think I’ll wander down to the kitchen and make some 1-o’clock-in-the-morning fudge before I go to bed.

Anyone else feel like kvetching? Feel free to vent in the comments!

Okay, here’s the story:

My mom needed a haircut, the salon we planned to go to had closed up shop, it was late, so we settled for a not-Supercuts-but-similar salon. There was one stylist working. ONE. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a salon where there was only one person working. Maybe that should have been our first clue.

Annalie wanted a haircut too, and she was due for one, so I figured, why not? Even though it’s a cheapie salon, Annalie’s hairstyle is simple. And hey, cheap haircut! So Annalie went first. This woman who cut her hair:

1. Didn’t introduce herself, to Annalie or to us. Hmm.
2. Barely spoke to Annalie at all, which is unusual. I know not everyone likes kids, but Annalie is polite and cheerful and usually fairly talkative. People usually respond to her in kind, but this woman didn’t warm up at all.
3. Didn’t put Annalie’s hair up in clips and cut it in sections. She just started hacking away. I realized the haircut wasn’t going to be any good but once she started I figured it was better to let her finish than to yank Annalie out of the chair half-trimmed.
4. Didn’t seem to realize that giving a 4-year-old child a little verbal direction would be nice. Instead of saying, “Can you look down at the floor for me?” she would push Annalie’s head down, or turn it to the side, or whatever. She sprayed Annalie’s hair with water without warning her at all; luckily I saw it coming and managed to tell Annalie her hair was about to be sprayed before it happened. She started to cut her bangs without warning Annalie to close her eyes. I kept up a running commentary to Annalie all the while, saying things like, “Remember you have to sit really still when you get a haircut. I know, can you pretend you’re a statue?” etc. I thought maybe the stylist would take the hint and start doing the same, but she never did.

A couple of days later when we went to the kids’ salon here, Annalie asked why she was getting another haircut since she just got one. I told her that the other lady must have been tired when she cut her hair, because she missed a few spots, so we were just going to have it fixed. That seemed to satisfy her, and she was happy to have her hair trimmed again. I was just glad to know the awful stylist hadn’t traumatized her.

I’ve had one of those days. You know how sometimes you’re just annoyed by everything? Maybe that doesn’t happen to you, but it does happen to me sometimes.

Normally I’m a pretty easy-going person. I roll with the punches and I don’t lose my temper very easily. But once in a while for whatever reason—lack of sleep, hormones, too much time spent around large groups of people, not enough caffeine—I get all snappish and impatient and generally not much fun to be around.

Today there was a whole list of things bugging me. In no particular order:

On top of all these things, today Annalie found this kite we have that folds up into a little zipper pouch. I bought it once to give as a stocking stuffer and then never gave it, so it’s been floating around the house ever since. Annalie really wants to fly that thing, and each time she finds it and asks I tell her (1) kites are Daddy’s department, and (2) it’s really not windy enough here and we should probably take it to the beach.

This afternoon Annalie trailed me around the house for ten minutes asking me over and over and over if we could go fly the kite, pleeeeeeease, but I really wanna fly the kite naaaaaooooow, etc. I patiently repeated items (1) and (2) the first 56 times she asked me. When she asked me the 57th time, I snapped. “Oh, for—GIVE ME THAT KITE.” I grabbed it out of her hand and stuffed it in my top dresser drawer. Then I announced, “I am giving myself a time-out.”

As I marched myself down to the kitchen I could hear Annalie saying wonderingly to Troy, “Mommy’s giving herself a time-out?” Heh. At least my announcement distracted her from getting upset about losing the kite. I poured myself a cup of coffee then went back upstairs to sit on the deck in the sun. The cats came out with me and Lily rubbed against my bent legs as I leaned against the wall, sipping my coffee and taking deep breaths.

My mom and my husband both say that when I am in a bad mood they tend to tiptoe around me a little bit, and that it affects everyone else in the house. When I am my normal self and they tell me this, I feel like a worm. I don’t mean to make everyone feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me, I truly don’t. And I hate the thought that my grumpiness is making them grumpy too. When I am having one of those days the thing that often snaps me out of it is remembering that I could be causing someone else to have a bad day too.

So during my time-out, I drank my coffee and said a prayer and decided, as Lloyd Dobler said, to just be in a good mood. Or to at least fake being in a good mood till the real thing arrived.

It worked. Even though nothing on the above list has changed (except that Troy did call our landlords and leave a message about the faucet), I’m not annoyed to the point of scaring my family anymore. Right now I’m sitting at my desk in our library with my laptop and a cup of coffee, looking out the window and enjoying the evening breeze. I am feeling downright serene.

After the initial moment of panic when my laptop first went into a coma, I really did think Hey, it might be nice to not lug that thing halfway across the country! After all, my mom has a computer, so it’s not like I’ll be totally internet-less. And my mom has been very generous with her computer. Even if it weren’t in the same room Annalie and I sleep in, she still would be allowing me free access to it.

But there is the problem: the computer is in the same room where Annalie and I sleep. That means each night when Annalie is trying to go to sleep, the computer is pretty much off-limits. Since we often are out and about during the day, that really limits the computer time. I get to use it when Annalie is good and asleep, but my poor mom has been having to politely schedule time to check her email. And I’ve been trying to actually sleep at night instead of giving in to the temptation to stay up into the wee hours of the morning blogging and reading.

Also, I’m used to having the laptop in the room with me in the evening when I’m watching TV and crocheting, so if a question comes up about, say, the cost of airfare from Omaha to Washington, D.C., or why an actor in a TV show looks so familiar, I can just look it up right then and there. I have joked in the past that I don’t know how to watch a movie anymore without browsing IMDb at the same time. This past week I’ve learned that there is more truth to that than I imagined.

Finally, I have not been able to download photos from my Nikon. The cardreader on my mom’s printer isn’t working. I bought an inexpensive USB cardreader to do it, but for some reason it’s not working either. I decided to give up and just download the photos when I get home to my laptop which Troy was able to rescusitate and restore to reasonably good health. Which is why I swiped some of my mom’s photos for this post.

My brother and his girlfriend gave Annalie a gift card to Build-A-Bear for Christmas last year. I intended to save it for a time we were in Omaha so Ben and Angie could have the pleasure of going with us. Then we, uh, lost the gift card in the move. It’s around somewhere! We just couldn’t find it before this trip.

But Annalie remembered we’d promised her a trip to Build-A-Bear. She went to a birthday party there last year and loved it. She was quite excited about going back. So I just paid for this pink leopard, which Annalie christened Heart Sophia Pink. I love the names she comes up with for her animals. She also has a penguin called Foot, a little black poodle named Apple, and a lamb with the impressive handle Easter Maryland Lamb.

This photo of my brother’s cat Styx (named after the river, not the band) and Annalie watching TV looks kinda like a LOLcat waiting to be captioned. Don’t you think?

Oh, right…I did a giveaway and said I was going to announce the winners. I am sure you’re all on the edges of your seats, waiting for me to do that. Without further ado, I declare that you are ALL winners in my book! Everyone who left a comment asking to be entered into the drawing is a winner, anyway. Congratulations to Mim, K, kj, Annika, Mysh, and Meaghan!