winter pic and some notes

I am serious. I'm on the computer, yes, yes, and now I'm logging on to blogger right NOW, and I'm posting a quickie blog - like a single picture, maybe two, and a couple of sentences - if it's the last thing I ever do.


today

I don't think I've mentioned before that we have an extra dog. Shasta has been with us for a few months, and we're dog-sitting until her parents get a place to live where they're allowed to keep her.

This week, the kids and I rode the train from Montana back to North Dakota. 14 hours on a train with a baby and a toddler - - this maneuver is NOT RECOMMENDED for a single adult if it's your sanity and love of life you wish to maintain. Actually, it wasn't too awfully terrible until the last couple of never-ending hours, when neither child would fall asleep but instead chose to be whiny and irritable and act like, well, like they'd been cooped up on a train for a whole day. At the end there, Zoralee was run over in the aisle (her own fault) by a very tall man who literally folded in half over top of her and caught his hands on the floor or a seat arm to keep from totally toppling over. So sorry, dude.

The day after we got home, we closed on our new old house. A person has to sign their name one jillion times on one jillion papers when they are buying a house.

For the last couple of days, I've been doing the very unglamorous post-trip chores of laundry and unpacking while battling a small flare up of the winter blues / post-partum / something or other. Felt like a million dollars today when I made a huckleberry cheesecake and a batch of dill sauce from a cookbook my folks gave me for Christmas (two recipes, unrelated to each other - the dill sauce can be put atop scrambled eggs or other breakfasty entrees). The kitchen is still a wreck, but I say, "never mind about that."

My birthday was yesterday. Thanks for the well wishes! It was an ordinary day of grocery shopping, getting books at the library, and setting up a new bank account. Amidst those ordinary things, Zoralee threw around a couple of innocent size-related insults. At the grocery store, she said, "That lady has a big bum," which, to be fair, was true. At the bank, when we were in back with the one lady who opens new checking accounts, Zoralee said, "This is a small office." I'm not sure what CEOs she has been hanging with to know the difference, but she does lead a fairly exotic imaginary life, so it's tough to say.

Night! Can't wait to catch up with the rest of you'ses blogs....tomorrow or soonish.