Headlines from our house

An assortment of things I've been wanting to share.

Juni (18 week old chocolate lab puppy) ate a foam paintbrush on Friday. She's fine and deposited its remains on the lawn or in the flowerbed shortly thereafter. I was up on the ladder putting the finishing touches on the bathroom painting and heard her crunching on something. I didn't give it much of a thought since she has toys scattered everywhere and is pretty good about not getting into things she's not allowed to have (except tissue in the wastebaskets). I found the remnants later in the hallway.

Random exchanges with Emily (3 year old granddaughter):
Me: "I have a boo boo on my thumb," pointing to arthritis-aching thumb joint on my right hand - no blood or other visible problems). "Would you kiss it for me and make it better?"
Emily, considering: "No, it will get better all by itself."'

Me (as Emily and I walked through Aldi's yesterday): "You can't get any new toys now. You're going to see Santa Claus in a couple weeks and tell him what you want so he'll bring you toys."
Emily, looking up at me: "Here?" (concerned that Santa will be bringing her toys to Aldi's)

Measurable, slippery wet lake effect snowfall in western New York overnight and today. Big bummer. I was out driving early this morning and the sky was steel gray in all directions, and even deeper colored out over Lake Ontario. We're lucky in that we only have an inch or so of snow. Buffalo got two feet and other areas nearer the lake (in traditional lake effect snow belts) got 33 inches. Yuck. The forecast is for snow intermittently over the next five days. Happy happy joy joy.

In a related matter to the snowfall, I glanced into our third garage this morning as I was leaving at our cute summer car, a Toyota MR2 Spyder named SUNNNNY. (Johnnie and I had a mutual mid-life crisis in 2003 and bought her on my birthday while in Cleveland for a family wedding.) SUNNNNY was sitting there looking very forlorn and shivering in the four wheel equivalent of a tank top and short shorts - her top down and windows wide open. Johnnie drove her to work as recently as last week. How fickle the season! She will now be tucked into her official winter wardrobe and slumber peacefully until the weather turns for the better in the spring.

We finally had to turn the furnace on for the first time last week for a couple days. Then it warmed up and we were able to turn it off again. Alas, with this current bout of weather, I think it will be staying on for a while this time. Sigh.

After struggling with strange happenings, unexpected bootings and reluctant start ups for quite a while on the Windows XP computer and the new computer loaded with Windows Vista for the past couple months, we finally bit the bullet and went for a MAC. Yes, the clever ads on television helped us make that decision. Well, those and Johnnie's on-going love affair with his iTouch. The new MAC is a thing of beauty - a 24 inch display that feels as large as a football field and a teeny tiny keyboard that I'm still working to get used to. And within this wondermachine is my MAC desktop, a Vista desktop and an XP desktop and all my files. Wow. It's so wonderful that Johnnie is so skilled at this stuff. I'd be hosed without him (and the MAC)! With all that said, sometimes I think my head will explode trying to figure out how to move documents and applications among the desktops. But it's worth it.

Does any other area of the country have to select their energy supplier(s) every year? We've been doing it for natural gas (and can also do it for electricity) each year for the past several. It's the utility's way of having its customers play Let's Make a Deal for the following year and deciding which of four or five energy service companies to select, each of which has a fixed price and a variable price option. So you're trying to wager which company will have the lowest rates for the coming year and within that, whether to gamble on the rates or lock in to a fixed rate. Once your decision is made, there's no going back. Plus, looking at past year's results is very confusing so you're never sure if you made the right decision or if you should switch for the coming year. It has now become an end-of-the-year ritual but I am not sure if this is a prevalent practice in other areas of the country. If you have something similar, could you leave a comment and let me know? It seems ridiculous to me, truthfully.

I'm sure it's no surprise to many other people (and shouldn't have been a surprise to me) but exercise works at alleviating depression and lethargy. Eureka! Our friend Bridget and I have been getting together three or four times a week to walk for an hour or so (three to four miles) for the past couple weeks to fight off apathy and lethargy and it's working just great. I've read it, I've intellectually understood its effects but never applied it to myself until now. All of a sudden I discovered that I have energy and I am not sitting around waiting for life to happen for me. Try it, you'll like it!