my sister katie directed me to this one:

While cleaning my contact lenses just now, I calculated how much of my life I have spent cleaning my contact lenses.

2 minutes every evening for 20 years = 14,600 minutes = 243.3 hours = just over 10 days

Had I been born with perfect vision, I could have finished Atlas Shrugged by now.

My apologies for not posting anything for 6 weeks and 4 days. And further for leaving Mr. Present Face dangling front and center as a daily reminder that my last post was on Christmas Eve. All this time, I’ve been giving the internet a rest. No, wrong. I’ve been giving myself a rest from the internet. But can you blame me? When I return to full fledged internet immersion, I am faced with terrifying graphs of our precipitous demise into The Great Recession. That graph is so ridiculously depressing it verges on utterly exhilarating, that is, if you do what I do and pretend it is a flume ride instead of a harbinger of complete economic collapse.

Anyway, part of the point of posting that yesterday was to set the stage for today’s news. Drum roll….doo doo-doo doo……Max and I are going to welcome a baby into existence right about August 15th, or 6 months from now, or right about the time the log jammer on the graph bottoms out through a glorious pool of hepatitis-flavored amusement park water and we all arrive safely back to the station. Then we give up flume rides forever and take up mountain climbing instead. Anyone still following me?

like this.

The weird part is, we’re not even concerned about the prospect of bringing up a child in the midst of a recession, despite the fact that we’re both architects, likely one of the less fortunate careers to have during times like this. Like the crazy lady who had those eight babies all at once, we’re just looking forward to being parents and figure our mothers will bail us out when help is needed. Oh Mom, I’m kidding! Seriously though, that octuplets lady is cuh-ray-zee.

If nothing else, we figure that creative solutions are inevitably the result of desperation. From the looks of our 12.5 week ultrasound, Baby Frix is already on the job, thinking up suggestions for our Congressional Republicans to help them get through whatever mental block is preventing them from implementing economic stimulus. We love him/her already.

don't worry if you have no idea what you are looking at. and don't worry if you don't see part of a head and whatnot. i'm sure it's there somewhere.

Things are going really well. I can eat actual food again, instead of just jars of peanut butter and Joe’s O’s. Max can again walk within a 10 foot radius of me if he has ingested any garlic that day. We’ve seen and heard a heartbeat. I’m officially in the second trimester.

And of course, we have renewed inspiration for finally finishing the upstairs bedroom. Tick tock tick tock.

We are experiencing the most snow on record in Portland. On the plus side, it is so bright that it nearly makes up for the lack of sun, it’s so pretty it makes our yard look that much less embarrassing, it’s really fun to watch people cross country skiing down the middle of the street, and it gives me an excuse to wear the giant downy jacket I bought at Ross back in October to complete my Margie Gunderson costume.

On the not so wonderful side of things, flights are having a tough time moving in and out of PDX. Max’s mom was supposed to arrive this past Saturday, but her flight was canceled. They couldn’t tell her when she’d be able to fly in so she didn’t re-book. So now we’ll see her in L.A….if we are able to drive out of here in two days. We were also supposed to have had a visit with my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Ted who drove up here from San Luis Obispo to visit my cousin Jon and his family, but that also didn’t happen because we were thwarted by this crazy weather. Waaah waaaah.

Tonight the plan is to gather at my sister Laurie’s house for a Christmas Eve slumber party. My other sister Katie bought the three of us flannel pajamas for last year’s gathering, and we fully intend to make it a tradition. Katie will be skiing over here from her house. Then we’ll combine forces to construct a sled out of junk from the basement, onto which we’ll pile gifts and cookies and Henry, who as it turns out, isn’t much of a snow dog.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas Eve! Write a poem about winter if  you’re feeling it, and stick it in the comments. I’ll rehash an oldie but a goodie. Here’s my Ode to Winter:

My nose
It froze
It hurts when I blows

our street

my poor scooter in the backyard

our house

max scraping us a view out of the house

help me

icicle madness

privacy please