Do as I say, not as I do: Sledding, the other freezing cold night, I was not wearing a jacket. However, I had on polypro long johns, jeans, a wool sweater, gloves, my signature scarf and an additional long purple scarf. My signature (favorite) scarf (purchased in the freezing cold Twin Cities my last trip back) is a long, woven use of textiles to include, but not limited to mohair and lovely, lovely wool. It's comprised of many, many colors. And, as I said, it's long ... so I wrap it round, and round and yet it still drapes down, front and back, as does the purple scarf. Second time down the sledding hill on Sunday, on the saucer sled, I flew in such a rapid manner that an additional length of my already trailing scarves came undone and fed under the sled, which then choke-held me and flipped me off the sled, head-first onto the hard snow. I felt a brain-jarring, I-think-I-have-a head-injury sensation, but all my marbles rolled back to their appropriate places and my brain stem appeared to have held for 5 more tries down the hill, this time the scarves tied up tighter. We didn't leave the hill until we were frozen turds and had busted one of the sleds. In the car, P. said, "If you saw one of the kids with a scarf a million miles long, a red flag would have gone off in your head, and you would have made them take the scarf off or tuck it in." You live, you learn, you take a few nosedives!

Our kingdom for a sled or six more weeks of winter: Having busted one of the sleds on Sunday we then searched several stores for a replacement sled, only to find that they either didn't have them in stock any longer or, "We just have snow boards." When we heard the snowboard advisory and were pointed to the aisle, Ali and I went parkway down the aisle and then said in unison, "We better not go there!" We both had visions of the local emergency room dancing in our heads. But we ended up searching all of Monday and coming up with no sleds. Tuesday, crack of dawn, driving through town I spied a multitude of sleds lying in a yard. An evil part of me wanted to steal one and leave 10 dollars pinned to a snow bank. However, late Tuesday afternoon at the hardware store, P. and I found sleds, purchasing the regular long plastic4-hand-holds variety and one of those rolled up plastic dealies. Like the groundhog and his shadow madness, if you purchase new sleds on the third Tuesday of February, you are automatically awarded six more weeks of winter! Yippy! We are now present and accounted for with three sleds of varying variety. P. always hogs the saucer sled, but I couldn't find another one.

Coming of age and mistaken age quotes: My 19-year-old on the phone last night: "I must be all grown up now, I just realized that bath foam is just colored shaving cream!" (I bought her bath foam as a gag for her birthday because she used to love the stuff!. However, she's 19 now, so she played with some of it, and the rest she put in the bathroom cabinet for future leg shaving which will now be done with green, yellow and pink foam.)

A shopper in the department store on Monday to Ali: "Ma'am are you using that cart?" (To which Ali said to me later, "Just because I'm tall doesn't mean I'm a women!"

The clerk at the same store to a coworker who brought her change to refresh her drawer: "This poor girl (me) has been waiting 15 minutes for me to give her change." (To which I thought, "I just bobbed 7 inches off my hair, and I thought this was a more sophisticated 'do! ... why don't I go buy a lollipop!)

"Backlog status:" These words appear in global emails sent out by the company I work for, appearing every hour or so, to let us know how much dictation is backed up the pike. Most days we are transcribing words on water and it's hard to stay ahead of the inflow. I took 2 days off to regroup, thinking I'd get a lot of stuff done on a "personal" level that has back-slid with our heavy workload of late. Instead, I am now running a "backlog status" list of my own, since during my two days off I managed to double any messes I tried to clear up, totally disrupted my desk and any hopes at organizing any "incoming" and "outgoing" stuff, watched too much cable even though I hate it, and basically got nowhere fast, or somewhere near digging out if I could have about 10 more days off. P.S. I had fun though, and I guess that's the name of the game when it comes to taking time off.

Tut, tut it looks like rain: It has become unseasonably warm, so any moisture in the sky tonight is supposed to cascade down as rain. Bummer. I hope it doesn't last.