What a wild start to the week! We had a massive wind-storm (think gusts of like 75 mph and you’re there) that knocked out power for most of the city and started 18 different fires (one is still burning and as of this evening had burned almost 2300 acres). The power had been flickering on and off Sunday afternoon, but finally went off and stayed off at 4pm, so we beat a hasty retreat to my in-laws who live an hour away and had power and most importantly heat! It wasn’t looking too hopeful when we came back into town yesterday afternoon and the thermostat in the house showed a nice brisk 48 degrees Fahrenheit for the inside temperature of the house, meaning that the power had stayed off and was still off. I didn’t want to drive all the way back to my in-laws, so we went and killed time and ran errands and lo and behold when we returned at 5pm to check one last time, the power was back on and our house was all nice and toasty.
The only casualty so far has been our city-issued regulation garbage container. Seriously internet, how does something that’s almost as tall as I am (and weighs almost as much as well) disappear? I’d blame the crazy neighbor kid next door, but I’m pretty sure that for once, this isn’t his doing. Garbage day Thursday and I’m totally going to scope out the neighborhood and see who suddenly hit the Garbage Lotto and puts two city-issued garbage bins at the curb and I am totally snagging one of them back. Possibly after dark because although I may talk big, I’m not quite brave enough to snag what may very well be my own garbage can back from someone else’s place on the street in broad daylight.

Other than that, life is good. My saintly mother-in-law has once again offered to take Owen for two nights (she totally acts like it’s the best thing ever when I let him come over for a sleepover. Little does she know that I feel pretty much the same way too), so I am totally going all out while the Chief Mess Maker my darling offspring is away and getting both the kitchen floor and all the hardwood washed (yeah, ask me about how I feel about sticky sticky unfrozen icy pops being spilled all over the hardwood–I’ll give you a hint–NOT GOOD AT ALL) ’cause I like to spend all my childless free time frantically cleaning. It is nice to be able to enjoy the floor staying clean for at least a half hour after I finish instead of the usual routine where you can’t even tell that I’ve vaccumed 10 minutes after the vaccum gets put back in the closet.
I think they’re going to have to call in a HazMat team when we’ve got more than one kid making the messes around here.

I have to postpone my little contest thingy for a week until January 7th because I have been so busy trying to keep my lungs from leaving the building and making sure that Owen’s nose doesn’t turn permanently green and crusty that I haven’t been able to do much else since Christmas.  Oh that’s right kids, we brought home an extra special present from our Christmas Adventure at Grandma and Grandpa’s house:  The Common Cold!

Currently, I am rocking (silently) the no-voice action since I have apparently either completely coughed it away (my voice that is) or the Cold itself has set up home base in my vocal cords or some ugly ugly combination of the two.  Do you know how much fun it is to try to wrangle an almost 18 month old with no voice?  Can you say about as much fun (and just as much progress) as herding cats?!!

After an ugly weekend and foolishly thinking we were past the worst part, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day proved me wrong.  I am cautiously optimistic that really, the Boy and I are truly closer to being on the mend than we were this morning (seriously–you KNOW it’s bad when you’re so congested that you have the nastiest eye goop ever because it just has nowhere else to go.  Would not have been surprised to start oozing out of my ears.  I’m just sayin’, is all) but it wouldn’t really surprise me to wake up tomorrow to find that somehow we have become even more sick and now must again brave the cold cold wind (NEGATIVE TEMPERATURES PEOPLE–IN SOUTHERN VIRGINIA–this is NOT.GOOD.) and annoying people who have no problem overcoming their social graces in order to ask me all about how and what I’m doing in order to take care of Owen and WHY IS HE NOT WEARING A HAT IN THESE TEMPERATURES (answer: um, because his jacket has a nice fleece lined hood and oh yeah–good luck trying to keep a hat on that boy?) in order to procure yet another MegaSuperMassive Quad pack of tissues (at last count we just tore into Quad #3.  That’s with 4 large-ish boxes of tissues being in each Quad Pack.  LOTS.OF.TISSUES) 

Now, I’m going off to drag my sorry sorry carcass into bed where I can hopefully manage to maintain a nice comfortable consistent body temperature (please let me not be the only one to suffer from night sweats when I’m sick) and not awaken  at 3 am to have to prevent Pnuematic and Wheezy (that would be my left and right lungs, respectively) from making a quick and hasty exit yet again.

…just trying to recover from Christmas, staying with relatives for 3 days and making 2 different round trips to North Carolina in the space of 5 days.

 I’m a little pooped.

Be back soon.