January in March

What do you do when it snows like crazy so close to April? If you're a mama, you brave the inches piling up outside the front door and head to Target for Easter basket toys and other goodies. You wander around until you think the traffic madness has died down and until the aisles of adorable flip-flops aren't enticing at all, just seasonally depressing.

When you do make it back home, you fire up the laptop to the sound of the sleet hitting the windows and the microwave reheating giant mug of coffee after giant mug of coffee, not for caffeine as much as for warmth. You blog a little, bitch a lot and put a sweatshirt on over your sweater and pull the space heater in a little closer. It's pathetic, yes. But it's also the last few days of miserable March.

Finally, you raise your hands to the blessed sky -- Why? Why? Whhhhhyyyyy? -- and ask the goddesses, beg the goddesses, plead and offer up all the Peeps and chocolate bunnies you plan to pilfer from the kid's basket after he passes out in a sugar and plastic grass coma, to please cease the snow and bring on the rain, mud and humidity.

[Brilliantly unseasonal winterscape photos credit: Jessica Ashley]

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Linkety Dinkety Doo: Oh, dang

Oh, Madge. False alarm. It's all good. You can still come to my finalizing fete.

Oh, Dooce. I knew you were listening in between doggie pics and antique pilfering. I just had a feeling you've been reading my little itty bitty baby blog. And I suspected we had similar tastes in crap TV.

Oh, honey. O, honey. It's just fine with me if you have a little air of superiority about your gold stars.  As long as the gold stars keep on coming (yes, those gold stars), who really cares how they (ahem) fall into your lap?

Oh, hell naw. See? I told you living with retired folk can be crazy. Thank the goddesses of small domesticated creatures my parents didn't read this article when poor little Corky kicked it last summer. Seriously, people. There's animal-loving and then there's that point when you may need to stop thinking about heirloom preservation fur crafts and start considering adding a few more hours to your Home Depot greeter schedule. (Thanks for building the dog hair awareness, Jenn.)

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Serenade in the sunroom

Taken this morning while Lil E jammed acoustic-like, keeping the beat to the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of my mom working out on the exercise bike. Note the increasing intensity and coordinated (and clearly necessary) construction worker safety goggles.

What can I say? The kid's already the master of the schtick. Prepare yourselves, people of Austin, Texas and faithful viewers of American Idol outtakes. No, really, I am sure he is incredibly talented. If a three-year old can rock an impromptu Lightning McQueen song so passionately to an audience of one workout grandma, he is clearly well on his way to musical greatness.

Photos (irritatingly but enticingly) after the jump.

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