New week, new day

I woke up this morning, sat up and *breathed*.  It feels like I've been holding my breath forever.

And only in California do we have days like this in January.  The sun is out, the air is warm-- I'd swear it was spring.

And something was contagious about my mood today because the girls got up and ready for school without a hitch- even if I was trying to dry Ave's sweat pants and polo in the dryer at the last minute since I forgot that today is PE day. 

I feel good today, finally after having had several days of sore throat-congested yuckiness.  Sometimes it's good to feel sick so you realize just how good normal really feels.

I stripped the bed this morning and put on new sheets- I love flannel and I love that it's January so it actually warrants flannel sheets.  Yes, even a top sheet.  Right there, you see the problem with the family bed- I can get away with flannel sheets in August when I have other bedfellows to consider.  Although, there is nothing nicer on a hot summer night than sliding under a single, cool, crisp cotton sheet that still smells of night-blooming jasmine from having been pulled in off the line just before bed.  Jersey is pretty yummy, too.

My grandmother had the best clothesline ever- it extended from her porch over to a big douglas fir, several bedsheets away.  It was on a pulley, so she'd stand at the deck rail and pin up the clothes and then give a tug to the cable and the laundry would be shimmied out over the garden to dry... a clothesline, in Washington-- in the woods no less, seems a bit impractical but so much better than lugging the clothes down to the dark, damp basement to the dinosaur of a dryer that was, turns out, rarely used.

I met a girlfriend for coffee today.  That was absolutely fantastic given that we couldn't stop talking though we haven't seen each other in possibly years.  We made a pact to go riding- trading off weeks, one week at her place, one week at mine.  I'm anxious to get the girls together, too, as Vi was instantly at attention when I mentioned one of her long lost friends of yore.

Kendyl and I took the girls on a return-unwanted/broken-merchandise-shop-for-t-shirts-and-laundry-soap trip to Target.  I don't know why, but they seem to have the best selection of liquid fabric softener all in one place that I've encountered.  Our Target sells milk now, which I find a little disturbing.  I suppose there is some logic to the whole one-stop shopping idea but it just seems a little odd to buy your milk and eggs in the same place you

The girls are now hounding me endlessly... "Are they ready?!?" since we made chocolate chip cookies tonight after dinner.  Can I just say in the middle of this chocolatey profoundness... silpat I love you! (And if you  don't know what silpat is... it is made in France(well, the *real* stuff is) out of silicone and is not a sex toy.  Seriously, I can not think of a single sexual use for this cooking accoutrement(but maybe I'm just not being creative enough at the moment).  Getting back to cookies, good cookies take patience. I have a whole assembly line process I've developed for placing the unbaked dough on the silpat-lined cookie sheets, baking them one sheet at a time in the oven, cooling on the sheet then transferring to a cooling rack for eminent eating.

This entire batch of cookies will be gone by tomorrow.  Guarantee.

As for me and my cookie, we are retiring to the bedroom now to watch disk three of the newest release of Battlestar Galactica.  Yeah, yeah, guilty pleasure and all, whatever.