Yesterday I dropped the little angel off at Oz.  Just as I was putting my shoes back on (they are not allowed for the little crawlers, which sounds nice and IS nice, but is a royal pain in the neck for those trying to remove shoes while holding an infant), I looked up to give the little angel a nice wave and maybe an air kiss.  She was standing in the exersaucer, happily playing with a toy, sucking on her paci.  All of the sudden, in swoops in Baby C., the evil Paci Bandit.  This baby bitch ripped my sweet baby's pacifier right from her mouth and put it in her OWN mouth!  Then, of course, the little angel began to howl like the hounds of hell.

I stood there, one boot on, one boot off, dumbfounded that violent crime begins so young. What's next?  Gang wars in the Pooh's Pals room? 

Well, I've been gone, okay?  My beloved and I left the little angel with my parents and whisked ourselves away to a fabulous ski vacation in lovely Breckenridge, Colorado. Wednesday through Sunday. It was the longest I have been away from the little angel since her birth, and I am happy to report I only wept as though my heart were breaking on two nights.  See?  I am still capable of independence.

Yesterday I returned to the furor of Corporate America to find my co-workers still suicidal and upper management still insane.  We heard some horrible news, and I left feeling more than a bit postal.  Then I talked to my friend who is going through some personal problems and whose birthday I also forgot on the worst day of her life.  I am a champ, aren't I?

This morning, I talked to my also-writer sister, whose will-I-ever-write-again breakdown I seem to have missed on Sunday, the day before my friend's missed birthday.  She said she needed a pep talk.  Now, my sister has been published in a major literary journal, compared to my small-peanuts local presses.  She actually has literary agents and equally snooty types calling her every few months or so to see if she has anything new.  Imagine that, someone calling you to see if you have something new.  No, I can't imagine it.  As you can tell, I am uber-sympathetic to her cause. 

No, seriously, though, I do understand.  I sat there in Breckenridge, waiting for the shuttle that was to contain three drunken Australian women who have traveled the world more extensively in the past month than I have in my life, and I worked on my latest short story.  I got four pages, and I felt like a rock star because there was one sentence in there that was almost okay.   Why do I do it?  I ask myself this question all the time.  The chances of me getting published in any real way are almost as bad as the chance of W. leaving a legacy.  My wit, unfortunately, is useful mainly as a corporate defense mechanism, one that keeps me safeguarded from getting sued when I want to mash the head of the IT department.  It protects me, much like being cute protects a little puppy left in the street.  People want to hurt me less when I crack a joke, even when it is at their expense.

You didn't ask for this, did you?  You logged on to read about my ski trip, not my sister's and my writerly naval gazing!  Aha!  You never know what you'll get. 

Another day that Oz is closed.  I woke up at 5:30 this morning to get some much-needed exercise.  I did Pilates to loosen up, then headed outside to scrape off the cars.  You might think this is a small endeavor - notice I did the Pilates to WARM UP.  I had to get in to the Explorer through the trunk, after ramming it with my shoulder about five times.  I attempted to crawl over the carseat, but since it is the size of a loveseat, that didn't work.  I again rammed the side door several times, until it popped open, damn near dumping my sorry butt onto the icy ground.  Thank goodness for those core muscles from the Pilates.

I got the truck started, then went to work on the real challenge - the Geo.  We started the Geo for about two nanoseconds yesterday - just enough to move it after we hit it trying to back out of the driveway - so it had been frozen solid for almost 48 hours by the time I tried to peel the sheet off the windshield and get the doors open.  Thankfully, the driver's side door had been opened in recent history, so I was at least able to start the car and turn on the rear defrost. It only took about 35 minutes for the rear defrost to loosen the inch of ice on the back window enough for me hack away a tiny hole, a little ice-fishing hole, so the windshield could gasp for air.

I can barely type now, my arms are so tired.  At one point, as I rammed down on the windows and door seals with my nuclear ice-scraper positioned much like Sharon Stone held her ice pick in Basic Instinct, I worried I might actually break the window. I thought how ironic it would be if I DID break the window, but the ice stayed intact.  I think that could happen.  But finally, I was able to open two doors and clear the front-side windows, the windshield and the back window on the car and everything on the truck. We now have two frozen-solid bedsheets languishing on our back patio - I'm pretty sure they will help us sell This Old House. That and the 100-year-old tree bent halfway over in the backyard. 

Freedom is an ice-free, startable car.

When I was in high school, there was this really dumb guy named Robert.  One day, Robert kept holding a piece of paper up to the wood-panelled wall in the history room, then he would watch it fall to the floor and look surprised. We all watched this for about ten minutes, on and off, until finally my friend Jeremy said, "Paper doesn't stick to walls, Robert."  Ever since then, it has been my internal rebuke whenever I do something stupid, like last night.

I did two stupid things, actually. In my urgency to grab the little angel and get her inside as the ice storm began to rain down upon us, I left the windshield wipers on in the Explorer.  This is my husband's pet peeve, but it is also VERY STUPID.  Because when your beloved goes to scrape the ice off the Explorer the next day and turns the truck on AND the windshield wipers are frozen to the windshield, well, they break. 

It's particularly dismaying when they break when you are trying to take the little angel to the doctor over a crazy-but-true poo mishap.  I'll spare you the details. 

Anyway, my beloved had to walk to the auto parts store (which is blissfully two blocks away), replace the windshield wiper, then start pulling the windshield-covering devices off.  Of course, I already told you that I used a towel, a tablecloth and a bedsheet.  NEVER USE ANYTHING WITH PAPER for this exercize.  While the towel and bedsheet were easily (well, as easy as anything frozen solid can be) removed, the plastic tablecloth with furry-ish paper lining, had to be chunked off in little, Christmas-tree splattered shards. 

Of course, my beloved did two stupid things, too. First, he parked the Geo right behind the Explorer.

Second, he backed into it in the Explorer because he didn't chunk the ice off the rear window. Well, we were late to the doctor.

Ole!  Welcome to 2005!  Glad to see parenthood hasn't made us any smarter.

Well, this is the third ice storm we've endured in This Old House. I had really hoped to be in a nice, new house with underground power lines, much smaller trees and a nice, two-car garage by the time this happened again, but, well, you can't always get what you want.

Last night, we covered the windshields. The Explorer was treated to a bath towel and a Christmas-themed plastic tablecloth.  The Geo got an old bedsheet.  We'll see which surface did better. Film at 11.

So far, I can't complain because we have power.  The last two times this happened, we would have lost it at least once by now.  We were treated to some fabulous light shows last night as tranformers around the metro went up in a burst of  blue light.  If you've never heard it, an arcing power line sounds a little like the end of the world. And seeing blue lights on the horizon in a densely-populated area is just plain scary.  But it's morning now, and miraculously we are still here.

Later today when the little angel takes her afternoon nap, we'll go outside and attempt to hack into our cars.  Looking out, I can see that the windshield-covering devices have been sealed in, Minority-Report-style.  I bought some wicked-cool car scrapers yesterday - one can even be extended for better leverage - so I have high hopes we'll be able to get the doors open in under an hour.  You may think I am kidding. I am not.

So...here's to hoping the lights stay on.  Here's to being so very fortunate they are, and the house is still here, and everyone is okay.

A lot of my friends are going through personal tragedies right now.  They make most of my little inconveniences seem very trivial.  It almost feels as though the world has suddenly become a precarious battlefield, and I have somehow dodged some bullets. 

Anyway, I hope we all make it through this week. I'm thinking of you all.

Every year around this time, I think about all the things that happened during the past 300 or so days. January always seems like it belongs to the year before to me.  It's still unfathomable to me that I was hugely pregnant this time last year and that I could've gone from being a terrified and clueless new mother with an hours-old baby to someone who waits five minutes to pull the wrapping paper out of her child's mouth because it IS kind of funny.

Obviously, the appearance of the little angel was probably the biggest thing that happened for me, but I am still aware that things like a presidential election, a horrible tsunami and earthquake and a war waged on under my own personal radar.  I was a bit distracted, thankfully, because all of the above were hugely disturbing to me and made me realize all over again how very little control I have over my environment. 

Upon further naval-gazing, though, I think 2004 has been my finest year.  It's the year I'm proudest of, anyway, and not just because I had a baby.  That was something that kind of happened - my personal strength or perseverence could not have kept her inside me, even if I had wanted that - which I didn't.  Any common weakling can get an epidural and experience childbirth.  Other things happened, though, too.  I taught my first college class, and out of 19 original students, about 14 or so hung in there until the end.  One even begged me to teach Composition II (I taught Comp I) because she said she couldn't stand writing but didn't mind my class. I think this is the highest compliment community college professors probably get.  I also became a manager of two, a term I should probably use loosely, because they don't really require management, but still.  I was a manager once before, and I did a very bad job at it, because I didn't really own the experience very well.  So 2004 was a whole year of firsts and rather a year of adulthood for me.  There were many situations in which I realized I had to be the authority figure, which then would require me to be firmer than I usually am.  I also realized that all that crazy responsibility probably also made me a BETTER person, because in trying to model the behavior I expected from my beloved, my students and my co-workers and subordinates, I probably did a better job than I would have had I thought no one was really watching.  Interesting.  I never really thought about this before. 

My company (a large tax-preparation corporation headquartered in KC, as you mostly all know) is building a NEW headquarters downtown. This is a good thing - KC is attempting to make downtown improvements, and it's a tough row to hoe.  As a result of the planned move, they are also tearing down a lot of used and unused buildings in the immediate vicinity.

I drive past this one old brick building every day on my way to work.  It had a mural of a guy dunking a basketball painted on it. I think it was a very permanent Reebok ad.  I liked the mural, but even more interesting has been the wrecking-ball procedure to tear it down.  Yesterday, they were actually smacking the building with a wrecking ball as people drove by not ten feet to the right.  I was kind of surprised, kind of worried some debris might fly over and smash my windshield and kill me, and I even briefly wondered if my family could get some sort of compensation from my company if that happened (isn't it SICK that I would think that?). 

Then, this morning, which is a very Catherine-and-Heathcliff sort of foggy morning, I drove by it and there was no wrecking ball. No people.  Just this half-demolished building with the floor pulled away and kind of fluttering down in a graceful pattern.  The outside of the building is brick and the exposed inside is sort of a fawny green color. It almost looks fluffy, like the blankets babies have with slitted edges.  Behind this torn building is a tall, cold, black-glass building with shiny edges.  The juxtaposition of the two is rather peaceful.  Sometimes destruction makes me feel good, like we're finally tearing apart the things that don't work and preparing to make them better. This building is like that.  I wish I had a picture.

A whirlwind trip to Iowa.  Watching the little angel learn to open presents.  Realizing she had her own stocking (these continued proofs that she is, in fact, a real person and not a figment of my imagination still amaze me).  Realizing she has enough energy to put six adults in a coma after about eight hours.  Realizing she is mine and will be my daughter for every Christmas from now until I die.

That's pretty amazing.