Meaningful Glances

Thanks to an atypical December storm, we are buried in snow. At all (or most) of 40 feet above sea level, we have over a foot of snow on the ground for the first time in my lifetime. OK, so "buried in snow" was a bit of an exaggeration - it is nonetheless a wild start to Winter. Under the top 6 inches or so of snow is a nice hard layer of ice about a half of an inch thick that only adds to the general misery of people trying to move around as usual (via automobile). On foot it can be pretty interesting, too, but it's definitely a lot more manageable. I just got back from walking with a neighbor to the Safeway across the street for a few more supplies before night falls. We lost power for several hours yesterday morning and have had a few brief interruptions so far today. Accordingly, our candles and matches are laid out where we can easily get to them, and we are stocked up on batteries for the one flashlight I can find. The real problem isn't light, of course, it's heat. If our power goes out like it did Sunday morning, it only takes a matter of a few hours for the interior of the house to dramatically cool off to near see-your-breath cold. This is what led us to take up my dad on his offer to ferry us to their house yesterday, where we ended up staying overnight even though the power was back on here at our place by the late afternoon, according to a neighbor.

Even under the imminent threat of a power outage, there's a certain appeal to looking out on this dazzling carpet of white from the windows of our home. We've already been able to help two neighbors since getting back late this morning, so I feel like we are where we need to be. Obviously - and thankfully - we have power for the time being, and we're making the most of it by cranking up the heaters, shutting off rooms to let them heat up, and baking cookies, because let's be honest - nobody wants to be stuck in a good old fashioned snow-in without some cookies (pronounced "coogies") close at hand.

Church gatherings all over our area were cancelled yesterday, including our own, and forecasts are not looking favorable for holding Christmas Eve services, either. First, we were to be thawing yesterday evening and in to today. Instead, 6 more inches of snow dropped on us. Now our beloved meteorologists are telling us that another heavy Pacific storm system might push the freezing level up a few hundred feet on Wednesday. We'll see...

So while I've got the chance and also, in the interest of full disclosure, not much else to do, I thought I'd upate a blog that I'm sure the one or two people who used to read it have given up on long since. To those few and any other who might happen by - Merry Christmas! May the peace of God cover your houselholds as richly and beautifully as the snow now covers ours!

Hey, it's the latest craze! Tagging friends and family to cough up a few quirky tidbits about themselves, and now it's my turn! I suppose it's only fair, given that I've read up on most everyone else who keeps a blog. Problem is, as I mentioned to Brigetta the other night, I don't really draw a line between "normal" blogging and "quirky" blogging. I, for better or worse, don't seem to have that filter when writing. Read my previous entry for proof. So here's my attempt at coming up with 7 more quirky fun facts about myself (in no particular order):

-I hate shower drains. I will make every effort to stay away from them myself and I cringe when I see someone else (like Evelyn) touch ours.

-While down-climbing Mt. Hood in 2005, I was convinced that I was sweating blood. Literally. It was getting a little warmer and I was utterly exhausted (14 hours of climbing will do that to a person). I opened my outer layer to cool off a bit and noticed a rust-colored stain on the left side of my white polypro layer, on my abdomen. I actually said to a few members of my climbing party "I think I might be sweating blood." Not alarmed, mind you, but just matter-of-fact. It seemed like an appropriate thing to say, but they quickly reminded me that sweating blood would be extraordinarily bad, and that I almost certainly wouldn't still be ambulatory if that were the case. Good point. Besides, as it turns out, it was just a leaky, cola-flavored energy gel packet that I had stashed in my jacket's inner pocket. Exhaustion does funny things to a person...

-I once threw an egg from the roof of a friend's house towards a road about 50 yards away...and actually hit a moving car (speed limit on that road is probably 35). Aside from the both of us, junior highers at the time, nearly falling off the roof while laughing, no real harm was done.

-And speaking of eggs - my go-to most embarrassing moment as a child: Approximately 2 weeks after my oldest brother, Scott, had shown me that, if you hold an egg the right way, you can squeeze it as hard as you want and it won't break, we happened to be making ornaments in my 5th grade class that involved...wait for it...eggs. I've never been much of a showoff (Ha!), but I decided to pass on this wonderful discovery to a few of my closest neighbors in class. If you guessed that it went off without a hitch...you're wrong! No - instead, in a show of nigh-on-Herculean strength, I managed to crush the egg and forcefully expel it's contents on to myself (it exploded). Face, hair, clothing...pretty much everything. Fortunately, the whole event left no lasting psychic or emotional scars.

-To show my undying love and devotion to Crystal, my major second-grade crush, I threw her coat in a mud puddle. Ms. Stoner (serious, that's her name) had the audacity to give me a "conduct" (short for misconduct) for my actions.

-I, more than just about any other substance on earth, including second-hand smoke and nuclear waste, despise peanut butter. My brothers used to torture me by forcing me to smell it.

-The secret to my immaculately-coiffed hair? Herbal Essences hairspray. There may not be much to hold, but what's there is on Maximum Hold! With a hint of orange flower.

So there it is. I'm not sure there's anyone left to tag, but I would like to see Scott and Mr. Cory hijack their spouse's blogs to join in the fun.

I have a confession to make.

I like foofy hand soap. Call it a weakness, call it slightly bent - it's alright, I'm secure in my self-image (as far as you know), but I've got a thing with my hands. A texture thing. I generally hate the feel of denim (Brigetta likes to scratch her jeans just to cause me pain), I don't like the way liquid hand soap makes my hands feel after washing, and just overall disapprove of textures that are half way between rough and smooth. I abhor having long fingernails and will frequently (seriously - watch me play guitar at church some time) use a hard edge or corner to apply slight pressure underneath them, because...well, I have no clue. Brigetta used to be convinced that I was autistic somehow - "on the spectrum," as she would say - I just figured that it was perfectly normal to walk on the balls of my feet over linoleum because I didn't like the way it felt on the rest of my feet. That is normal, isn't it?

But back to hand soap. Today is the second "Daddy Day" in a row for Evelyn and I, and we celebrated by getting a chocolate donut at the "donut store" (Albertson's) after dropping mommy off at work, then went to the mall this afternoon for our official "Daddy Date." This morning, as I was resting on the balls of my feet in the kitchen and washing my hands, I noticed that our last container of foofy hand soap (it foams!) was getting low. The multitask alarm went off in my head, and so, as part of our Daddy Date, we hit up Bath & Body Works for some new, exotic (foofy) scents. The picture above is not, as it may seem, Evelyn shoving the soap nozzle up her nose. Close, but she had enough self-restraint to avoid actual insertion. A friendly associate at the store made her way over to explain that the sale on soaps was a "mix 'n' match" sale (it always is), and proceeded to point out several options that we hadn't yet put to the sniff test. "Yeah, listen - this ain't exactly my first Bath & Body Works rodeo," I wanted to say. I smiled politely instead: "Thanks." Besides, none of the other soaps foamed. We settled on Enchanted Orchid, Japanese Cherry Blossom, and - get this - Midnight Pomegranate. "Oh, man, I can't sleep, it's midnight, I've got work in the morning...what am I gonna do? Hey, that pomegranate looks good..." You can understand my skepticism as I unfastened the top to get a sniff...but, sure as Al Gore invented the internet, it smelled exactly like midnight!

Midnight. What a great marketing word. Milky Way Midnight, Midnight Madness, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I could have added it to the first line of this blog and totally changed the tone. Go ahead, read it out loud to yourself and see if you don't blush. At any rate, it makes for a great soap scent because, let's face it, Pomegranate is just not enough.

What do you do for a soap-sniffing encore? Go see the goldfish, the Mickey store, and find a way to make mac 'n' cheese sound new and exciting, of course! "We're going to go pick up super yummy mac 'n' cheese from a mac 'n' cheese store, Evelyn!" Again the eyes widen - score one for daddy. "OK! We go pick up mac 'n' CHEEEESE!" I am wholly convinced that I could say anything in this tone of voice and garner the same reaction. "Hey Evelyn, we're going to go run over a whole kit of baby rabbits in our van! How's that sound?" You get the picture.

Instead of reading a book or taking a nap (which I could really use) right now, I thought I'd take a little time to update this ferociously neglected blog. It's a "Daddy Day" today - Evelyn is mine all mine until mommy gets home. She is snoozing cozily in her recently reinforced bed (see Brigetta's blog for more on that), and I am here in the office (den, family room, man cave, whatever), having just cleared out the remains of our "playhouse." "Fort," apparently, was not as attractive to Evelyn. "Do you wanna help daddy build a fort to play in?," I'd say. "I don't have to," came the reply. "What about a playhouse - should we build one of those to play in?" Behold the eyes widen; "That be OK!!! We make build a PLAAAYHOUSE!" And so on. Down came the futon matress, quickly followed by the vacuum cleaner - it turns out Evelyn wasn't quite as neat with her breakfast this morning as I thought - and then there were blankets to gather, books to weight them down, chairs from the dining room, pillows from every corner of the house, and one light-up penguin wand from the zoo. It took up all the free space in the room, excepting a few feet in front of the door when "we" finally finished it. "We" meaning "me," despite the "help" from both Evelyn and Scout. It's - and any of you fellow fort builders out there can attest - delicate work putting together a masterpiece of this magnitude. When you realize that one big bible isn't enough to hold this blanket on that support and there's no way to walk around to get at it, you must crawl through the unfinished structure to make the repair. My problem - excuse me - my help today decided that they would crawl through with me. "Stay right here while daddy crawls through." Yeah right. "I crawl with you," said Evelyn. Scout agreed by licking me from chin to eyeball. So "we" built it together, took our penguin wand inside and had ourselves a time. It's amazing how the same old toys and activities become fresh and exciting when you're in a "playhouse." We sang the ABC's what had to have been a half dozen times, hammered on the hammer bench, typed on an old keyboard, fixed Daddy's hair, took a "rest" (for all of five seconds), and experimented with falling flat on our faces. OK, that last one was just Evelyn, and even though I do generally enjoy a good face-flop on to a mattress, I had to explain to her when she asked me to try that daddy was too tall to try it in the playhouse. I wish I'd been able to take pictures, but I think Brigetta has the camera with her at work today, and my cell phone camera wasn't able to pick up much in the relative dark of the playhouse interior. Instead, you get my thousand words, give or take a few (thousand).

And that is a slice of my new-and-improved Thursday. In the current absence of a second job, here's where all the time goes: Mondays are family days - zoo, park, swimming, the mall, you name it. We find time to get out of the house as a family and have fun on the only weekday that we all have off. Tuesdays start off with Brigetta out the door early and Evelyn getting to "sleep in" and have breakfast and some play time with me. At around 10am, Miss Julie comes to pick Evelyn up for the afternoon while I set in to work on the coming Sunday services. Brigetta picks up the kiddo after work while I snoop around the kitchen to see what the girls could have for dinner while I'm off climbing with Randy. I get my kisses and hugs when they get home and then it's off to the gym so I can be back for the bedtime routine. Wednesdays start off much the same, except that Brigetta doesn't have to be away quite so early, so she gets Evelyn up and out the door to Julie's on her way to work. I spend that morning and afternoon trying to more or less finish work on any chord charts and other things that need to be done before Sunday so that I can make a brief stop by the office in the evening to make copies and pull any charts I didn't print from home. Thursdays, as you now know, are Daddy Days. I get to be Mr. Mom, and I'll be honest - I love it. Not easy, certainly, but worth it. When Brigetta gets home, I'll head out to practice with the rest of the worship team and try, once again, to be home in time help Evelyn go night-night. Friday is usually the day that Evelyn gets to go to Granny and Papa's (my mom and dad) to play in the late morning and early afternoon, though this week they will both be out of town to a wedding in Virginia, so I get an extra Daddy Day. Woohoo! We might even have a car and a camera for that one, so look out - there may be some pictures coming your way tomorrow.

As if on cue (a really, really early cue), the sounds of Evelyn discontentedly stirring are tickling my ears, so it's time to stop typing and go to take my little short-napper for the walk I promised before rest time!

Addendum:
"Hey Sweets, why such a short nap today?"

"I just wake up. I was jumping."

"Do you feel like you have to go potty?"

(Contemplating with head to one side) "I feel...like I have to go play."

I woke up from an impromptu nap yesterday to the sweetest little voice you've ever heard asking, in the sweetest way you've ever heard, "Can we go get some sand?" Even after Evelyn repeated these words for the seventh time in rapid succession, it was still brain-hemorrhagingly cute. A little groggy yet, I sauntered out to the living room to find Brigetta resting her eyes momentarily in the rocking chair, having successfully convinced Evelyn to come ask me to go get sand. Mustering our energy, we decided that, it being late in the day, getting sand in the morning would be a better way to go. Evelyn did not agree. Evelyn had also failed to take a nap earlier in the day. So with hugs, consolation, and the promise of sand in the morning, the storm eventually passed.

This morning, as promised, we piled in to the van for a trip to Home Depot, or as Evelyn called it, "The Sand Store." After studying each potential bag for carcinogen warnings and other cautionary statements, we settled on two 50-lb. bags of play sand, one of which now fills Evelyn's turtle box (formerly the turtle pool). She immediately and copiously thanked Daddy for the sand, while simultaneously digging in with her sparkly green "scooper." She's back in the house for a bite of lunch as I write this, but we'll be back out in the sandbox soon.