last night we did indeed go out for spicy Chinese food. Cleared out our sinuses it did. :)
We had hopes Stevie would try some, since we took his best friend with us. He did take a bite, but did not like it. :(
Oh, well. :(
Back to work tonight. Yuck. :(

Another sunny and beautiful day. :)
Getting a lot of housework done, in addition to getting all of the Middle School singlets and warmups washed. Dan is the only middle school coach now, so all of the unifrom washing duties (very imporatant in wrestling so as to help prevent skin diseases) has fallen to us. It's a long story as to why he is now the only official coach for around 50 6-8 graders, and I won't get into it today...
Will be taking the dog out for a long, blissful walk soon!
We are hoping to go out for spicy Chinese food tonight to clear all of the nasty stuff out of our heads...
Also have to have a family meeting about Bill's school trip to France, Steven's school camping trip, and our big trip to New Mexico and hopefully Colorado in June. I had asked for a week after New Mexico, thinking that we would be picking up Dad and bringing him home with us. Now that that is impossible, we would like to go to the mountains in Colorado instead. (bliss...)

Beautiful day outside. It's sunny and up in the forties. The snow is melting rapidly. I am wearing a t-shirt and shorts today.
Poor Bill missed his third day of school today with the bad cold I shared with everyone. I spent most of the day running errands.
One good errand I ran was buying a huge amount of perrenial roots and bulbs to plant as soon as the ground thaws out enough. My friends sent a huge basket of plants to my father's funeral, and also gave me some money to plant some flowers at my home. :)
So I bought a huge number of lilly of the valley, which my father had loved, to plant in the shade. Also a rainbow of day lillies, and some flowering vines that look pretty in the pictures. :)
I think I would like to buy two cherry trees as well. Dad loved his cherry trees in when he lived in Michigan, and they are also the favorite fruit of both of my sons...

Poor Bill now has the bad cold, missed school today...at least wrestling is over, he had the season from hell, but still somehow ended up with a winning record...so he doesn't have to try to practice/wrestle while sick again... :(
One day more of work, and I can be off. I am going to make myself do housework, no matter how much I am coughing this weekend.
Finished the Pressfield book, it was most excellant!

Bit tired today. Wish I could could shake this cold...instead I gave it to poor Dan on his birthday...reading a great historical novel by Pressfield called Gate of Fire, about the ancient Spartans and how they came to battle the Persians in a climactic battle at Thermopylae...possibly the best historical novel I have ever read. It is for people who are interested in the sncient Greeks, in explorations of courage and honor, in the birth of the Western world...

Well, our plans, as usual, changed today. We did get out to lunch, at Chili's, which we enjoyed. Dan looked like he was coming down with a bit of a cold.

When he finally got home tonight, he was feeling pretty bad...I fixed a nice, big dinner, we had cake and ice cream, and he is now resting. Poor man felt much too bad to go out tonight. :(

I know its not his fault, at least it isn't tonight, but tis strange how something comes up at least nine out of ten times he and I are suppose dto get some time together...much too often to be a coincidence, especially when we so rarely make plans...

Today is Dan's birthday. He is off at work, but if his work allows today we will meet for lunch. I have the night free from work, and we hope to eat dinner with the children, then go listen to some live jazz in Ann Arbor, if his work allows. We will be getting snow tonight, so he might have to go out and do snow removal...

Is this thing working yet? It's been down or having problems for days now....
Looks like it might be working now...it's been so long I'm not even going to try to recap what's happened since I last wrote here, as it has been too long!

Instead, today Bill was out in Napolean to watch his team in individual districts. The senior at his weight won the challenge match, so got to wrestle today. In fact, that kid is going to go on to the regionals, and I hope he gets to go to states from there. :)
Dan and Steven and I headed down and spent the afternoon in Dundee. We went to Cabella's out door superstore and spent a few hours, weighed Steven in for tomorrow's wrestling tournament in Dundee, and ate dinner.

Steven is having a huge growth spurt and it is incredible how much food the little one can consume right now. :) He has grown several inches in height since Christmas. :)

Now that wrestling season is over, hopefully Bill will let himself eat, so he can grow, too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something that is not so blissful is the fighting that has been going on between Dan and myself. Valentine's Day is a perfect example. He promised several times to spend the day with me. Of course, he went to a wrestling tournament instead. And he doesn't understand why I consider his promises to be yet more lies...

is this thing working yet?

Driving home last night was an adventure. It had been freezing rain for a couple of hours when I left work at midnight. The police were warning everyone as they left the building not to use any of the freeways if it could be helped, as they had been getting lots of accident reports on their scanner. So I took the surface roads, at baout 25MPH. At a few points you can look over from the road I took home and see the freeway. All of the big trucks had their emergency flashers on and were creeping along --
I was going a lot faster than the freeway traffic was. I slid through some of the intersections, as you literally could not stop. Thank God very few other cars were out and about, so I did not hit anyone or get hit. I was so happy to make it home!
Today Steven is supposed to go get his yearly hearing test and see a specialist at UM hospital. He has genetic hearing loss. I hope the roads will be clear enough to take him in. If the clinic is even open, of course...who knows if the employees can
even get there...
No school, of course...
They were already short handed at work, I am sort of expecting a call from there to come in...even if I have worked 11 of the last 12 days...but I can't because of the appointments for Steven...

Today was sunny. I got out of the house and went to the store to get gifts for a couple of special occasions coming up in Dan's family...the sunshine was nice...getting out of the house made me feel a bit better...
Another ice storm and more snow tomorrow though. :(
Almost forgot, yesterday when there was no school, Steven and I went out to lunch at the bakery. I had forgotten how much a little boy in the middle of a growth spurt can eat. :) He was all smiles and little boy bliss...made me feel a world better to see him so happy... :)
Well, John did tell me how there was still wonderful things i nthe world, like sunshine and my children...and I would add to that kind friends like him. :)

Got woken up by the kids at 6AM this morning. They were happy because there was no school today, due to icy roads. There was also a pea-soup fog...its a good day to be home (though I will have to go to work later)...
Hopefully this will be the last ice storm for awhile, though we only lost power briefly.

Another bad drive home from work in the middle of the night. The start of the drive was in freezing rain and hail, changed over to great big snowflakes by the time I got home. Well, at least we got two days of sun, for which I am profoundly grateful.

The dates for cleaning out Dad's house have been set for late April. Dan has surprised me by going through the AAA book and looking for a nice place for me to stay down there. He found a resort of nice cabins with fireplaces and hot tubs on
one of the big dammed up lakes about an hour from the house, on the other side of Hardy, where we usually stay. The place even takes dogs, in case I want to take Max with me. Dan is insisting he will be coming with me, but having experienced his devotion to his business all of these years,(not to mention his decided LACK of devotion to me) I will not be surprised a bit if something comes up and he changes his mind at the last minute.

In the meantime, I have a purring cat in my arms, and a CD of Schubert string quartets playing. Life could definately be
be a lot worse...

I left the house for the first time today for something other than work for the first time since we got back from Dad's funeral, other than when literally dragged forth. I hope it means my grief, which has allowed me to do little more than lie in a ball in bed, is receding a bit. Had a long talk with my friend John the other day, which helped a lot (though it probably depressed that kind man as much as it helped me).

Today was cold, don't know if it even got into the teens, but the sun came out for awhile, which was wonderful. First sunny day we've had since the turn of the year. I was glad of it. Makes life better somehow...