Week from Hell

Paul has been gone for a week and a half. And, of course, during that time, everyone decides to get sick. Sophia ran a fever last Wed. at daycare so I had to leave early to pick her up. It turned out that she had an ear infection, and so I had to stay home with her the next two days. She got over that pretty quick and then I started catching a cold. Then Thomas started catching a cold and had a small fever on Tuesday. I took him to the doc and no ear infection or anything. Well, this evening he became feverish, lethargic and unlike himself. So, now I have to take tomorrow off. It's basically the last day of school before break (Fri is a half day with fun stuff planned) and I had tests planned that I will now have to cancel.

I hate missing work and I've never missed 3 1/2 days in a matter of one week before! My kids definitely come first, but my students rely on me and ultimately their grades are in the balance. So, it's hard for me to be absent! And, it sucks that we don't have any relatives around here that could watch the kids for a day if they were sick so I could go to work. I give many, many kudos to single Moms who are doing all this stuff by themselves on a regular basis. I'm completely exhausted, out of energy and just plain worn out from these past 2 weeks. I only have a day and a half to go . . .

More BB

BB King

Paul and I went to see BB King at the Houston House of Blues on Nov. 19. It was awesome - he is so incredible and is still touring at 83 years old!!! We've seen him 3 times now and each has been an awesome show. I took some video that I"ll share here. It is him playing the song 'I need you so bad' (not sure if that is the actual title), which is one of my favorite songs. It is one of my regrets that I didn't choose it as our wedding song. I had another I wanted to share, but it was uploading. I'll do this for now and see if I can get the other one to work. Sorry if the video is not complete professional quality - due to my vertical impairments, I had to hold the camera up kinda high. Anyway, enjoy!

The Christmas Tree

The Christmas Spirit has found our house and it is moving in with full force! We went on Saturday to find our Christmas tree - not just pick it out of a lot, but to actually wander amongst neatly sowed rows of pines and pick the most fabulous tree we could find. It was cold for Texas - Paul was wearing shorts and nearly shivering, Thomas was crying because he was afraid of the tractor and Sophia wandered into the trees to end up with sap covered hands rolled in dirt and pine needles. Yay for the Christmas Spirit!! But, damnit, we were going to have FUN!!!

We found the perfect tree, which didn't really seem that big compared to all the other ones surrounding it. So, Paul sawed the trunk and I gave it the final push over after photo documenting the whole wonderful experience. The people shook it out, wrapped it up, helped us load it up and then we were off. After a few miles we had to pull over due to strange noises coming from above which turned out to be the tree slowly slipping off the top. The teenager who tied it on did a crappy job. We retied it, loaded up on some caffeine from Starbucks and headed home.

We brought the tree in, unwrapped it and it almost blew the windows out of our living room like Christmas vacation it was so big!! It is 9 feet tall and VERY wide!! Paul actually could not quite reach the top with a step stool to cut the wrapping all the way off. Paul is 6'6" tall - a sign that the tree is clearly too big. It looked so small out there in the forest . . .

Because the tree is so big we had to rearrange all our furniture, and it's all shifted slightly to the left so that all seats can see the TV. We put it in a stand that seems a little small for the size of the tree, but we had no idea that there are different size tree stands. I guess you live and learn. The trunk is very crooked and at one point nearly splits in 2, so it took five tries of anchoring it in the stand before it looked like it was fairly stable in all directions. Who knows. I am just waiting for the cat the take a drink and the whole thing to come tumbling down.

We are having lots of family come for Christmas, and so this tree will easily nestle all the gifts that will come, and it will spread all the Christmas cheer we can stand. It will be beautiful, if not a bit too big, and provide a lesson in just how big a tree we should consider in the future. But, it's environmentally friendly and smells good. I just hope there's not a squirrel in there somewhere . . .