My great-niece is SO CUTE!

I can't wait to meet this little peanut in December -- she is so freakin' adorable!  Here she is after she fell asleep in the car.

I dunno, but she may just give Caroline's niece, Baby C, a run for the cuteness money!

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

A couple of weeks ago Bob got a pretty bad cold virus, and while taking care of him I managed successfully to avoid contracting it from him. I was very proud of myself, taking great care to wash my hands and slam Airborne a couple of times a day.  As Bob was finally getting over his cold, I started to let my guard down (stopped being careful to wash my hands, stopped the Airborne) and evidently came into contact with some diseased person in Chicago last weekend, who infected me with their version of this nasty virus.


I woke up Wednesday morning with what appeared to be a little old man who had smoked for 40 years living in my lungs.  I decided it was just my annual spring allergies, which break out after the first warm days, and denied that I was sick even though my voice was clearly several octaves lower than usual.  The next day it went into my head/nose and the temps dropped disturbingly, so my allergy story wasn't working anymore.  Still I gave denial another shot (in addition to slamming more Airborne) and went to a meeting on Thursday afternoon and evening.  Not my best idea.


I spent the next two days alternating between sneezing, coughing, blowing my nose, and contemplating death, with some whining and moaning thrown in for good measure. I am not exaggerating when I speculate that I drank 10 gallons of hot tea during this time, as it was the only thing that soothed me.  Well, hot tea and hot showers, though I couldn't take those every 20 minutes.  I slept better than I expected to at night thanks to Nyquil (and switching to decaf tea in the evening) but when morning came there was no relief, just more torture (and whining and hot tea).


But I had to do the Lord's work today so I bucked up and got out of bed, put clothes on for the first time in days (as opposed to the flannel jammies I'd been living in) and went to church.  Bob led most of the service while I limited myself to the Reflection which was mercifully short.  I was drugged and a bit dazed, and very happy to return home to my jammies and comfy chair, where I now sit with my laptop, starting my 11th gallon of tea.

Study Leave

So today is the first official day of "SL."  It was supposed to start Tuesday, but I had to spend the day with Presbyterians instead.  So the start date was moved to today. We are home, but will leave for Chicagoland tomorrow to get out of town and be less distracted. (If I "SL" at home I find the need to clean the kitchen, the office, sit outside, etc. and get too distracted to do the "S" part of "SL."  If we leave town it's less distracting in a hotel as they clean the room, etc.)


What am I studying this week?  Two books.  One I already started and need to finish -- the one I'm using for the Beatitudes sermon series:

The other book is one I plan to use for another Reflection series, if it turns out to be any good, which I am sure it will, since it's a Crossan book:










Okay well, I started this entry hours ago. Then I got an call to meet someone at the ER who fell while out walking on the first beautiful day of the year (sunny and mild temps, it felt like spring today!) and, as it turns out, broke her shoulder and knee cap and had to have a bunch of stitches in her head.  Poor dear.  She'll be okay, believe it or not -- is obviously in a lot of pain and has to cancel a trip to CA next week. But she's strong and brave and has lots of friends to help her with the early days of recovery. In fact one of them came to the hospital as soon as I called her, and is going to take her home this evening (yes, they are planning to release her, believe it or not) and stay the night.  She is a saint, especially since I am leaving town, and so is KT (who is the Care Committee Queen) -- happily she's staying in town and will take good care of W, as will many other good NCC'ers (including us when we get back to town late Monday).


So I just got home and now TOMORROW will be the official start of SL!

Laura Ingalls I am not

This morning at 6:30am I was rudely awakened ..... by the sound of silence.  The furnace turned off at the same time as my ocean-waves noisemaker, and I sat up and asked the obvious -- did the power go out?  Bob replied that yes in fact it had.  He suggested we go back to sleep since it was so early, and since there wasn't much we could do about it, which was a good idea. But I got paranoid about no one calling Ameren to let them know our power was out unless I got up and called them on my cell phone.


I wonder -- perhaps Ameren has an automated alarm system thing that let's them know when power is out, and they don't need us to call and tell them? I have no clue -- but just in case I got up, found my phone and called them.  


When a nice lady answered instead of an automated system, I was flummoxed for a moment, and then told her our power was out.  She apologized, asked for my address, asked if we heard a loud popping sound or saw a flash -- I said I had no clue, I was asleep.  Bob said no we didn't -- apparently he'd been awake, unable to sleep, for awhile.  (Actually both of us woke up around 1am this morning, unable to sleep, so we watched or DVR of "The Ricky Gervais Show," which made us laugh our butts off.  I was able to go back to sleep afterwards, but Bob was not and he told me later he was upstairs working on his Reflection until finally coming back to bed about 5am.  I had no clue.)


She said her computer show'd an outage for 26 customers in our area, she had no idea why.  We hung up and assumed power would be restored soon, since it usually is (and it wasn't windy or stormy or anything outside -- in fact it was sunny and pleasant with a mild breeze).  Since that brief encounter woke us up, we ended up getting out of bed, where I commenced to turn the light switch on in every room I entered out of habit. I was aimless and lost as soon as I realized I couldn't do what I aways do first thing every morning.  Yes, yes, I was able to pee, but I could not check email or Facebook.  So I went upstairs to make an early breakfast (earlier than we usually eat on Saturdays, we usually eat at 10am during "Wait Wait").  We have a gas stove, so I was confident I could make the usual Saturday bacon, eggs, and taters.  But the burners wouldn't light because the electricity that makes them spark was out.  So I lit them with a lighter and felt like a pioneer.


Then I got the eggs, etc. out of the fridge and realized we needed to limit our ins and outs of the fridge so the food wouldn't spoil.  Again, very pioneerish.  Additionally, I had to cook with only the light from outside, as of course the light over the stove did not work. And it only took me five minutes to realize why the toast was not toasting. Thank goodness it was sunny and not the gloom we'd been having all week, otherwise I'm sure there would have been a painful bacon grease incident.  

After breakfast the power was still off, and it had now been two hours. I made plans to put the food in our camping ice-chest in case it was out much longer and then sat in the living room by the big window to read.  It's a lovely book -- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which is lovely.  But even the beautiful prose of that book couldn't keep me from itching for my Facebook fix.  I wondered how we would survive if the power didn't come on soon -- Bob had a training appointment and the garage door opener wouldn't work, so he was going to have to take my car.  And I pondered taking my mother's car (which I NEVER do unless it's an emergency), which was also in the driveway, to civilization (the office) to check my email.


Fortunately the power came back on about 9:30am.  Ameren called back on their automated system to tell me the power was back on, and informed me that the reason for the outage was "a downed line." Since all of our lines are underground, I suspect there was another reason (perhaps Charlie Sheen nibbled on them).  But no matter, the power was restored, and I was able to leave my pioneer life behind me once again.

Would this be tacky?

During lunch I was working on an ad for Pawsitive Transformations for the ACHR Rainbow Connection.

And I got an email from Equality Illinois asking if I was willing to be listed in a directory of clergy who will perform Civil Unions, which I of course said yes to.  And then I wondered, should I put this ad in the Rainbow Connection too? Or is it tacky?

Yeah, I'm back, but oh so busy!

I love going on vacation. I LIVE for vacations. If I could change my profession to "vacationer" I would.  But I can't. So, getting ready to go on vacation, and then coming home, are exhausting.  Almost enough to keep me home and not vacationing (almost, but not quite).  And I'm finally starting to see some light after being home for a week+ -- piles of things are disappearing from my desks and I finally feel like I can take a moment to blog.

We did have a WONDERFUL time in Hunting Island, as usual.  We relaxed on the beach most days, watching for dolphins and reading.  Occasionally I took walks, alone or with Kayla or Bob, and looked for Sand Dollars.  I found two this year (I found hundreds more, but they were still alive, and that would be just mean).  I saved a bunch of them (putting them back in the water) and was rewarded with this beauty:

We ate and drank wine and just basically RELAXED. The best kind of vacay. And most nights we sat by a fire and looked at the full moon and gazillion stars. 

What did I read, you ask?  I read back issues of Vanity Fair I hadn't had time to read before, and a bunch of books while I was gone (all novels).  Someone asked me to name them all, which I couldn't at the time.  Let me try now ... let's see.  I read ...

When I got home, a new Vanity Fair was waiting for me.  And other came a few days ago.

Clearly I need another vacation ...

View of sky from chair sitting in our campsite.