Real Snow! For once the weather people got it right. Usually when the scrolling graphics that shout impending fluffy white doom take over the local news we don’t even get enough to cover the grass. My child gets out his snowboard and spends the day trying to board on what is basically a heavy frost. It started snowing at 8:30 yesterday morning, school was already called off and by that time my child was already braced for another disappointing snow-less snow day. Not this time.

The Million Dollar Dog uses her newly effective camoflage to try and sneak up on a squirrel.

This was the view of my neighborhood last night, just before I went to bed.

It’s still snowing this morning, the kid’s 8:00 am basketball game was canceled

and I am reveling in the luxury of a long weekend with nothing to do, a well stocked pantry,

and a stack of British mini-series from Netflix. It’s damned close to perfection.

Note: Photo has absolutely nothing to do with the crabby post below, except for the fact that the

one bird looks like he’s ready to smack the other one, probably for being a dumb-ass.

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It’s that time of year; time for me to start hearing from those once a year clients who’s calls bring to mind all the fun of a yearly check up with the gynecologist.

Seriously, is is just me, or would you be insulted to get a message like this:

“Hey, I need to get some changes made to that brochure you did for me last year. Well, it’s a little bit more than that. Umm, see, I didn’t use that printer you sent me to. They wanted three hundred bucks to print those things! And my buddy John just bought this really nice printer, it’ll do black and white and color and everything, and he said he’d print them for me if I’d buy the ink and the paper. Well, he couldn’t use the disk you gave me, I guess ’cause you use a Mac, and he has Word. Whatever that means. Well, he could get some of the stuff, like the pictures, but not the part with the words on it. Anyway, he took your pictures, and copied the words off the sample you made for me, and did me one in Word that looks almost just like the one you did. Well, the pictures are stretched out kind of funny, but, I mean, it’s okay. The one you did looked better. But he changed some stuff. We added some more stuff… and um, changed the colors, so anyway. Well, his computer crashed, so now I was wondering if you could make me another one, with the new stuff that he added, I’ve got an extra one you can look at, but could you make it so we can just print it on his printer and he won’t have to work so hard on it? ‘Cause it was really hard for him to get it to look the way yours did. He spent, like a really long time on it, got real frustrated. I mean, he doesn’t do, like, design work or anything, so he wasn’t real fast at it like you are. Well, okay…call me back and let me know when you can do this. Thanks! Oh, and I’d be willing to pay you.”

Gee…would you?

If you don’t care to read my rant about some colossally self-absorbed jack-assedness, then just look at the pretty picture of this morning’s sky and then move along.

Years ago I did some design work for a charity event and wound up in the email address book of one of the committee members. After the event was over I remained on her contact list, even though we had never actually met, because when she went to work as a sales rep I got an email announcing how excited she was to be joining ABC Enterprises, she was so thrilled with this new company, and would be calling on me personally very soon to discuss all the ways they could benefit my business.

About six months later I got an email announcing her departure from ABC to embark on an exciting new opportunity with DEF Incorporated, while ABC was a wonderful company, and she had made many dear friends there, she was anxious to set off in a new direction, and would soon be calling on me personally to discuss all the ways DEF could benefit my business.

After a few more of these emails at regular six-month intervals, she sent one announcing that she was going into business with a dear friend as a free-lance event planner. Naturally, she would soon be in touch to discuss working with me. So helpful, with all zero corporate events I needed to plan. A few months into her event planning career, she emailed again announcing that event planning had led her to discover her true calling…Life Coaching.  She would be in touch soon to discuss how her new-found life coaching skills could help me optimize a job search, organize a move, find a mate, or discover my true calling in life. Apparently there are a whole lot of people out there who have no idea whether to shit or wind their watch, because I started getting invitations all the seminars and retreat weekends she was doing around the country with price tags of five to fifteen hundred dollars. By God, it looked like she really had found her true calling.

On Friday I received her latest email/newsletter update.The headline “IT’S REAL!” was followed by several paragraphs describing her diligent search for a doctor who could diagnose her persistent pain and chronic exhaustion. The upshot was that she had finally been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, and there was a link to an online diagnostic questionnaire (sponsored by a drug company) to help you diagnose your own CFS and Fibromyalgia. (!?!)

Now I am not here to pass judgement on either of those as valid medical conditions, but the checklist of symptoms could have described anything from a slight hangover to uranium poisoning. At the end of the list you were congratulated on finding a diagnosis, and encouraged to rush to your doctor and demand their treatment, which offered hope and just maybe the slightest possibility of a potentially fatal side effect.

She hoped that her friends and clients would understand that she would be curtailing her travel and speaking engagements to deal with her illness. Apologies to those of you in Cleveland, Little Rock, and Pittsburgh. She would however be honoring her commitments for a seminar held on a cruise ship, one in Oahu, and one in Miami, where there were still a few slots available, if you are interested in turning 2010 into a year of personal growth with an inspiring and award-winning life coach.

The fact that she had to have sent this email while being bombarded with images of people being dragged from the rubble of Port Au Prince made me livid in the face.

Or maybe it was my undiagnosed auto-immune disorder flaring up.

Tuesday evening we had dinner with two of my cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. At one point we were laughing about being allowed to tag along with them and their friends to some cheesy horror movie about killer cockroaches. My sister and I were reliving the whole thing, right down to the plot of the movie, and being terrified afterward by a stray cat tipping over a garbage can. My cousins didn’t remember it at all, barely remembered us visiting them for a week because they were occupied with things like boyfriends, summer jobs and college applications.

To this day I am sure they have no idea that we idolized them, and that they were a tremendous influence on our lives.

While we were sitting around the table after dinner gabbing away I looked across the room at my boy, hanging out with his cousins. My nephews are all in high school, about the same age difference as between my sisters and our cousins. The guys were passing around his mp3 player and listening to the songs, and not in a “Oh, God, can you believe the stupid songs on here?” way. They were treating him like one of the guys, as they always have, and you could see from the expression on his face that he was in heaven. There’s just nothing as great for a little kid like being treated as an equal by the big kids.

And just like my cousins, probably when the guys are grown they won’t remember these evenings as anything special, but he will look back on them as some of the greatest times of his young life. I sure hope so, anyway.

Big fluffy flakes with no sign of a let-up. Of course, it could snow at this lazy rate all day and still not cover the ground.But it drives the cardinals to the bird feeder in droves.I like watching red birds in my blue garden.

I glanced at the husband’s calendar yesterday, and he did not have the dreaded fundraiser written down. I was hoping frantically that he had forgotten it. No such luck. He reminded me about it over dinner last night. My ankle is painful, but not bruised or swollen enough to be a valid excuse…unless I spend the next few hours hopping on one foot….

But as Baldrick used to say, I have a cunning plan. I will offer the husband a warm-up cocktail as we are getting ready to go out this evening, mix it strong enough to lower his resistance, then offer him a second one mixed just below the concentration of jet fuel. He’ll sit down on the bed to put on his shoes and not be able to stand up.

I mean, damn! It’s going to be like 9 degrees once the sun goes down, and we’ve already sent the check, it’s not like freezing our arses off is going to raise them any more money.

I love it. As soon as the ground thaws, I am going to plant lots of it, and then people will look at this site and think, “Oh, for the love of God! Does she ever take pictures of anything but pampas grass?”

She sun peeked out for a moment yesterday afternoon, in between snow showers.

Looking at my calendar, I have just realized that there is an annual fundraiser tomorrow night that we are supposed to attend. Is it alarming that I am seriously considering doing myself physical harm to get out of going? Where’s that whiplash when you really need it?

Edit: Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy that I tripped on my own shoes in the kitchen and hit my left ankle bone so hard that I couldn’t even cuss?

And awfully glad to be here. Back where the beds are comfy, the spice rack is fully loaded, and people realize that there are few questions that can’t wait until a woman has come out of the bathroom. “I’m making tea…do you want a cup?” is not on the list. Neither is “Would you like to say Happy New Year to my friend Roberta? She’s on the phone.”

We had a nice time in Atlantic City. It was freezing and nearly deserted, which are pretty much my two primary conditions for enjoying any beach related leisure. The husband’s family is determined to convince me that there is no greater paradise on Earth than the Jersey shore. Enh…my idea of paradise is something other than sand bars on one side and casinos and outlet malls on the other. The best part is the pizza joints in between the two. There were a few nice photos, though, and a truly spectacular chicken florentine, and we watched Zombieland in the hotel room with leftovers, which I highly recommend.