We visited Barnes and Noble a couple of months ago, which we don't do very much these days. The girls always want new books read to them and we don't get to just read things ourselves, which is half the fun of going to Barnes and Noble.

Greg, bless his heart, volunteered to take the girls somewhere and I had an hour or so to myself. This was right after Oprah had selected "A Million Little Pieces" as her book club selection, so the book was front and center as I entered the store.

I grabbed a copy and found a vacant cushy chair. I didn't want to buy the book, just figure out what Oprah had seen in it. I started reading and I was completely hooked. I sat there and devoured the pages.

I even started crying at one point. And I don't think it was from reading the description of his non-medicated root canals.

I thought it was a wonderful book. I really don't care that it's not truthful. It moved me. I learned from it. Time flew while I read it.

Greg bought it for me for Christmas. I'm glad I own it and I'm not going to stow it at the back of some shelf and pretend I wasn't entranced by it. It's a great book, no matter if it's fiction or nonfiction.

Doing performance appraisals is the pits.

Even when you work in Human Resources and it's your job to make sure that the appraisal conversations that take place in your company are productive, informative, and motivating, you know that most appraisal conversations leave the appraisalee at least a little ticked off.

The boss never seems to think they're as great as they themselves think. Don't believe me? Try having people appraise themselves and then compare your scores to theirs. Not fun, but it induces productive, informative conversations.

It's too bad someone ends up unmotivated most of the time.

I read in the paper today that OK is the most common spoken word in the English language.

Tonight, I was bathing both girls in the bathtub. They'd both been scrubbed and next I sudsed up Julia's hair. I put a rolled-up washcloth on her forehead to help divert some of the rinse water and then pushed her head back gently as I said, "Look up, Julia, look up," to help keep more water off her face.

She wasn't looking up, so I repeated myself, but my gentle push was a little too hard for her resistance. She started slipping backwards in the water, so she put her hands back and started yelling as her butt slid a little bit on the slick bathtub bottom.

She didn't go under or anything, but she definitely wasn't happy, especially since she now had water dripping all over her face. I immediately wiped the water off with the washcloth. I told her, "I'm sorry, Julia. Are you OK, are you OK?"

Her emphatic reply--"I NOT OK."

I guess this was one of those times when that word (plus two others) said it all.

Allie and Greg have both been taking piano lessons for about two months now. Neither of them practices nearly enough, unless you consider 1/2 hour just before their 1/2 hour lesson enough.

I told Greg that we need to get serious both about Allie practicing piano (Greg is a big boy, he can remember to practice by himself) and about Allie practicing reading (Greg has that one covered).

Last night, we worked a little on her reading. Tonight we were in the living room, watching TV with the sound on low, while Allie tried to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb," among other songs, in the dining room. She was doing well, so we hollered some encouragement.

She did not think she was doing well, so she hollered back, "This one is called Head Music." Blamm, blamm, blamm, blamm, came the sound. She's a prodigy!

Back in the day when I lived in central Illinois (before meeting and marrying Greg), my family developed this custom called "Blank" Family Weekend. No, obviously not really "blank," but I don't know that my parents want their last name splashed over the internet.

Each February, we'd plan an annual weekend getaway somewhere in northern Illinois (about halfway between our homes). We went to Rockford and Elgin (I believe it was Elgin because don't they have a casino there?) and so on. Stay at a hotel with an indoor pool and either shopping or the aforementioned casino readily available.

It was fun and a nice break in the winter. There's a photo somewhere of me and my sisters jumping on a hotel bed. We'd have drinks and snacks in the room, go swimming, and eat somewhere highly recommended by AAA.

Then I had my first date with Greg and shortly afterwards, the first time my family met him was on a Blank Family Weekend.

We had one more family weekend the next year and then we lost the habit. I lost my job, Greg and I moved to Wisconsin, we bought our house and we had Allie. Since her birthday is at the end of January and everyone comes to our house for it, we didn't revive the custom.

Well, I figure it's been 10 whole years, but we're bringing back the Blank Family Weekend. Sometime in February, me and Greg and our girls and my parents and my sister Pam and her man Jeff and my sister Claudette and her husband Mike are all going to vacation together in Wisconsin Dells.

I am really truly looking forward to it. The rooms we're getting have a full kitchen and dining area, fireplace, four TVS, three bathrooms (one with whirlpool tub), and three balconies (which I'm sure we'll make much use of in February, but it'll make for a nice view). It's at one of the many resorts with an indoor water park, so our girls will exhaust themselves and collapse happy.

How many weeks do I have to wait?

So I got my new business cards today. I'm ridiculously proud of them. Human Resources Director. I can't thank my old boss enough for being entrepreneurial minded and wanting to open her own business, so I could earn her job.

It's been an OK three weeks so far. Lots of overtime. Finding my feet, while Greg holds down the fort. What a sweetie.

And he remembered to send me beautiful flowers on the 11th anniversary of our first date. I am indeed a lucky woman.

But I knew that already.

I got it! I got it!

I got the promotion that I've been trying for since, literally, May. It was May when my boss gave notice and, as of December 25 (Merry Christmas to me!), I've been promoted. Woo hoo!

Woo hum--oh, boy. Do I have the challenges in front of me, boy howdy. But I work with good people and I'm mostly excited. It's going to be a challenging, interesting, amazing time. If I don't wear out and die first.

Wish me luck!

Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming!

And now that I spent hours yesterday shopping and wrapping, I'm OK with that. I bought a bunch of gifts, including a couple for my husband that he is going to love (tee hee--he has to wait six more days). The stores were crowded, but not too bad.

The longest wait I had to check out was shopping with Greg on a Tuesday afternoon for the girls at Toys R Us--twenty minutes from when we got in line to when we walked out. On a Tuesday. That place must be insane on a Saturday.

I bought the gifts I owe my sister and dad for their birthdays from October (oops) and at work, open enrollment is finally over (we met with about 650 people, individually). There's only four days of work this week before a long, long weekend and I'm excited about that.

Life is good. Happy Holidays!

All of us in the Lee household made Christmas cookies yesterday. Flour everywhere. It was fun.

I used to make cutout cookies with my sisters and my mom every year when I was a little girl. We'd pull out the bag of cookie cutters and wonder why we never made cutout cookies at any other time of the year, so we could use the heart cutter and the clover cutter and the bunny cutter.

Then we'd make a double batch of Christmas cutouts and we'd remember why we didn't do them at any other time of the year--it took a really long time to roll and out bake that many cookies.

I don't have my mom's recipe (I should ask her for it), so when my family has made cutouts for the last three years, we've used a sugar cookie recipe from someone I used to work with. Here's a shoutout to Bev Gardner of Decatur, Illinois, who I unfortunately haven't talked to in at least five years.

It's so sad and so typical. You spend literally years of your life with people at work and then you leave or they do and you both vow to stay in touch and after, say, three years max, you don't talk to them anymore.

Well, Bev, your Eisenhower sugar cookie recipe is an integral part of my family's burgeoning history. Thank you! Onward to frosting!

We decided to make Julia's crib into a toddler bed. It converts by just taking the front rail off and tah-dah, toddler day bed. We were stupid.

We thought that Julia, the second child, would be like Allie, the first child. Allie stayed in her bed. She woke up on weekend mornings, called us to tell us she was awake, and stayed in bed, sometimes even when urged to join us in our room. Allie woke from naps, called to tell us she was awake, and stayed in bed until we came to get her.

Julia does not do this. Big surprise.

We put Julia in her bed and she stands up and jumps on her fun, bouncy mattress. Even though she always could reach, she's now figured out that she can reach the overhead light switch from her bed. So she turns on the light. And turns it off. And turns it on and leaves it on when it's an hour past her bedtime.

She gets out of bed and knocks on her bedroom door, trying to get us to come and let her out. (I said we were stupid, but we're not that dumb. Her door sticks, so she can't pull it open. She does have to stay in her room if we want her to.)

Julia lays on the floor just inside the door, with the overhead light on, and revels in her independence and control of her environment. It makes me smile and tear up at the same time.

Big girl.

I can't believe this is my 107th post. Who da thunk I had so much to say.

So it's time for a lecture--hey you, go donate blood! Yes, you! Don't be a chicken, you can do it. It's really no big deal. Hey, if I've done it 55 times so far (over the last, oh my god--could it be, 20 years), you can too.

Think about it. How much do you really do for charity. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yeah, we send a lot of clothes to St. Vinnie's too. Uh huh. Boy, that isn't a very impressive list, frankly. Did you know that I used to tutor a woman for the Literacy Council of Green Bay years ago and she got so much charity food at Christmas and Thanksgiving that she offered some to me? Sorry, off the subject. But occasional food donations still aren't too impressive.

You know, you could donate blood. All it takes is a little time and you don't even have to open your wallet, except to take out your donor card the second and subsequent times you donate.

They're really nice to you. They give you kool-aid or orange juice and brownies, cookies, and crackers galore afterwards. AND YOU HAVE TO EAT THEM! Isn't that the coolest? You have to eat them to get your sugar levels back in balance (plus drink water, but that's boring). So no matter what you ate for lunch or how close it is to dinner--EAT UP! You've earned it. Doesn't that sound tempting?

Donate blood, give it a try. You might need some someday, you know. And you'd have paid your psychic debt if you've donated even a few times in the past. See, it's karma! Everybody needs good karma, right?

So seriously, try donating blood. It's a good thing to do, only 3 percent of Americans do it, and you can actually save a life. Donating an old can of sauerkraut just doesn't compare.

Julia is now 27 months old and she knows how to count to ten. How do I know that she can do it without coaxing her by getting her started? Allie, me, and Julia play hide-and-seek. And when it's Julia's turn to count, there you go.

Allie and I usually count to twenty, so Julia counts to ten, then goes llellen, then she pauses and starts over with one again. The second time through, though, she says one, two, three and then uncovers her eyes and hollers, "Here come!"

Julia is also completely in love with her candy bucket from Halloween. We really need to hide the buckets of both kids, but Greg and I aren't completely finished stealing all the chocolate yet. So Julia carries her candy bucket around the house, tries to take it to daycare (I don't think so!), and insists that her bucket be next to her head when we lay her down to change her diaper.

In the morning, she wakes up a little and almost immediately remembers (well before any thought crosses Allie's mind) that she has a bucket full of candy somewhere, so off she goes to look for it. I don't let her eat candy for breakfast, obviously, but the hope in her little brain springs eternal. We're planning an addict intervention for next week Tuesday.

My sisters love Cancun. They love it so much, in fact, that they recently planned for and paid for their fourth (yep, you read that right, fourth) trip to the same resort in Cancun in the last 8-9 years.

Unfortunately . . . . .

They're scheduled to leave on November 5 for their resort. Wonder if it's still there?

In other news, Betsy and Chris (of the tornado tale) are expecting their third baby! Congratulations to them and their two girls. It turns out that Betsy was about 2 weeks pregnant when they lost their house. Rebuilding is underway, and with any luck, they'll be in their rebuilt house about a month before the baby comes.

Destruction and construction all around.

Happiness all around!

This month is the time to celebrate my parents' 45th wedding anniversary, my dad's 67th birthday, our 9th anniversary, and my sister's 44th birthday. Hallmark is earming record profits this month, by the way.

Last weekend, I took the girls to a fast food place for lunch while Greg was off at his vroom-vroom class. We were eating (or Allie and I were eating while Julia busied herself sucking ketchup over and over again off one french fry) when a bride-to-be came in, complete with veil and attendant.

Someone asked her when the wedding was (it was about 12:30) and she said 2:00. I told her that Saturday was my parent's 45th and she exclaimed, "that's a good omen." Indeed.

Ah, wedded bliss. Right now my loving husband is downstairs on the couch, watching a trashy show about celebrity couples while moaning that his stomach is upset, and I'm on a different floor of the house surfing the web and blogging. We do love each other, honestly. But, at least some of the time, I believe this is how we got to 9 years.

Happy Anniversary, Honey!

The other night, Greg and I were in the kitchen talking about work when Allie came over and said, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I need to tell you about something that happened at school today." Where does she get this stuff? She's 5!

Fortunately, she still acts like a little girl most of the time. Recently, I called her "buttercup." She smiled, then asked me what a buttercup was, then gave me a huge hug (with a face-splitting smile) when I told her.

She's sweet. Even though she looks grown up these days. Something about her wearing jeans and Converse tennies and hoodies--- And she's getting so tall. Allie's going to be 6 in about 3 months and I can't believe it. What happened to my baby?

I was reading an article in a human resources magazine the other day about how something like 40 percent of Americans lose some vacation every year because they don't take it. And something like 68 percent said that they check either voice or e-mail messages while they're on vacation. And something like 85 percent did not take 5 days of vacation in a row last year.

It's official, we're vacation deprived. Especially, as the experts like to point out, compared to Europe. Would I like the entire month of August off? You betcha. Would I actually do it? Of course not. The world would fall apart, wouldn't it?

We're all so absolutely necessary. At least we tell ourselves so--how immodest.

And how many of the past 10 years have I taken off 5 days of vacation in a row? This year was the first year in 10, since Greg and I went on our honeymoon. Sigh.

Date Night!

Last night, Greg and I got to go on a romantic, no kids-- date. My parents were here at the end of this week, taking care of our two girls because our daycare was closed and they stuck around so we could go out for dinner and a movie last night. Thanks for everything, Mom and Dad!

We ate at Crave, which is one of those oh-so-modern, trendy food type of restaurants and everything was very good. The best part of the meal, however, was the dessert. Strawberry shortcake, in a tall skinny glass, layed and yummy.

After dinner, we walked around the Monona Terrace rooftop garden and looked at the views. It was a beautiful night, not too cold.

Then we drove to the theater and saw, "The 40 Year Old Virgin," which was excellent. Bawdy, sweet, cringe-inducing, very funny.

We did call to say goodnight to the girls. Sweet dreams, glad you aren't here!

My mom, who is one of the few who reads my blog, told me this morning that I needed to update it because she was tired of facing my tornado story. This demand for update on a blog is, by the way, from a woman who didn't know what a blog was until about 2 1/2 years ago and who didn't own a computer until about 4 years ago. When she got the computer, she said she was only going to use it to look at the pictures we were posting of her first grandchild. Uh huh. Now she asks for blog updates and whizzes her way around the internet.

So what's been happening? Lots of things in our town, in the aftermath of the storm. I drove out to see what was left of Betsy's and Chris's house a few weeks ago, once the state police took down the roadblocks intended to keep out gawkers like me. I drove to see Betsy's house and then came home, so I don't know that I win a gawker's first prize.

By the time I saw where their home used to be, there was nothing left but the foundation and they were waiting for a report from an engineer to see if they were going to be able to rebuild on it--they are. They still hadn't drained the murky swimming pool in the backyard yet as of last week and because they can't see the bottom, they have no idea what might be in it. For all they know, there could be a car down there. They're not going to be able to safely garden in their yard for years, too, because of all the broken glass in the soil.

The 3-year-old, Erin, talks a lot about the poopy tormado (not tornado) that wrecked her house. Maddie, the 5-year-old, doesn't talk about it at all. She started kindergarten on schedule, though. They're going to be OK.

Allie started kindergarten on September 6 and she loves it. Last night, as she did last Friday night, she almost started to cry because she wasn't going to be able to go to school on Saturday. She's made new friends, including a little girl named Maddy (different girl than above) who sat at Allie's table at lunch every day and cried. Allie's nothing if not a sensitive soul, so I don't think she ate lunch for the first 7-8 days while she too tried not to cry.

Allie's not too crazy about hot lunch--she likes her daddy's sandwiches, made fresh every morning. She got to go on her first field trip yesterday, to a nature center, and she learned all about plants and bugs and saw a real tarantula. Allie did not want to touch any bug, by the way.

She's had gym class 5 times so far and all the games they play sound like they involve extensive running. She's had art a bunch of times and she's working on some project that she hasn't talked too much about. Allie likes music class, and she loves her reading buddy (reading with a 4th grader) which is once per week. She's already brought home three books from the school library (sequentially, they can only take out one at a time).

And she's doing great walking the three blocks from her bus stop to daycare, thank goodness. That was the thing Greg and I were the most stressed over. She's done it completely by herself at least a couple of times and she often walks at least part of the way with other kids. Now we can just start worrying about winter walking.

Meanwhile, Julia is doing just fine at daycare. She's talking in phrases all the time now. When I opened her window shade this morning, she saw a bird and called my attention to it, then spent a good 3-4 minutes telling me the bird was "Up, in da sky. Up, in da sky. Up, in da sky." Yes, I got that, Julia.

She hasn't bitten anyone in ages, knock on wood, but she does hit. I have to confess that I'm not going to worry about that. It's usually Allie and Allie usually deserves it. Now if she would just eat------ Well, I suppose she eats like a normal toddler, but that's not very much. The kid is still skinny and tall.

I got a raise last month, which is awesome, and we're spending a little less on daycare now. Pig, the cat, is still doing OK despite her diabetes, and the grass outside is actually greening up in places now that it's cooler. The newspaper said we should be giving our trees a drink, though, since it hasn't really rained in ages.

That's the update on our family and household. How are you doing?

Tornado Stories

Some information about what happened to us and to our friends yesterday . . .

Our girls were sitting at the kitchen table, eating some apple slices, and Greg was going in and out, grilling leftover prime rib, when our weather radio went off. We shushed the girls to listen to the broadcast, which said that we were under a tornado warning, with severe weather to the far north and far west of us.

We looked at each other and then silenced the radio. I ran upstairs to get on the computer in our bedroom, so I could see the radar and tell whether stuff was coming our way. As the computer booted up, I looked out the side window of our bedroom and saw clouds in the not-very-far-away distance, black and rotating.

I ran downstairs, yelling to Greg, who was now sitting at the kitchen table with the girls, to come outside now to see the clouds. We both saw the formation of the tornado.

I ran back in and grabbed Julia from the table, where she was screaming because everyone had gone outside. I pulled Allie with me and we went downstairs to the basement. Greg stayed outside.

I booted up the computer downstairs and tried to get a weather radar up, and turned on the TV. Just then, the cable went out and both girls started crying because they were so scared and because the TV was turned up really loud (it made a static noise).

Our lights flickered a couple of times but we couldn't hear anything happening. The online connection on the computer didn't work because we have a cable modem. The girls and I stayed downstairs for perhaps 5 minutes while Greg stayed outside, taking the video you see on the main site.

When I couldn't stand not knowing any more what was happening, I went upstairs with both girls--there was no way they were going to stay downstairs without me. By then, the tornado had moved probably a mile or so to the east and was clearly not going to hit us.

Greg had watched it go behind our water tower from west to east, which meant it was at least 1/2 mile away, but we didn't know how far exactly. It turns out it was about 1 mile away or so--an F3 tornado with winds estimated at 200 miles per hour. The path of severe destruction is 1/2 mile wide. This thing looked huge. Greg's video doesn't do it justice. The news tonight said it was Wisconsin's strongest tornado in the last decade.

One man died in his basement when his chimney fell on him, so sad. The saddest story that touched us personally was about our friends, Betsy and Chris. They lost their house, their beautiful 1 1/2 yr. old all brick, three-car garage, inground pool, screened-in porch home on the golf course.

The garage is gone, the bricks (that they agonized over the choosing the color of) are stripped off, the second story is gone, the roof on the screened in porch extension fell straight down, and the pool is, of course, full of debris. Some of the walls of the first floor are still standing, but the house is completely ruined. Most of it that didn't blow away fell into the basement, where Chris was sheltering with their two girls who are 5 and 3.

Betsy had gone to play in a softball game, which means that this morning all she owned was her game t-shirt, shorts, and cleats. Chris saw the tornado coming across the golf course and took the girls to the basement. They just got there and hunkered down when the tornado hit and the house fell apart.

After the noise stopped, Chris managed to find a way out--he doesn't remember anything about how except that he carried both girls and kicked things out of the way with his bare feet (he hadn't been wearing shoes in the house). They had to get out immediately because of the strong smell of gas.

They started walking towards Betsy's parents house, which is about 2 blocks away, out of the path of major damage, and someone gave them a ride there. In the meantime, Betsy's brother, Dan, came running from his house, which is about 2 blocks in the other direction. He saw Chris's wallet in the car, which was now in the driveway, more or less, instead of in the garage, and knew that Chris and the girls had been home.

Dan had the presence of mind to turn off the gas (and he knew how to do it, heroic guy) and he eventually figured out where they had gone. Shortly after Dan left, Betsy arrived at the house with a couple of other people. You used to be able to see the house from about 1/2 mile away as you drove in, and Betsy could tell that the house wasn't really there anymore.

She got to what was left of the house and things were dead silent. The three of them spent what had to be an agonizing 15 minutes or so calling Chris's and the girls' names, trying to figure out if anyone was still in the house, before they found out where Chris and the girls had gone. Can you imagine how Betsy felt for that time? It makes tears come to my eyes.

They're all OK, at least physically. Erin, the 3 year old, asked for a nookie last night when she got tired enough to sleep, and Betsy's family managed to find one for her. The family didn't have anything to call their own until this morning, when they bought some basic supplies. That is, except an exceptional family support network that will get them through this.

Another friend and co-worker was driving and ended up just south of the tornado when it cut across the highway. She ended up lying in a muddy ditch while it passed, next to a man and a woman who was sobbing hysterically. They're all OK.

Two cars had a t-bone accident right in front of her, right before she went into the ditch, and I haven't heard that those people were injured too severely. There are 4 people hospitalized, one in serious condition.

Another co-worker had an aunt and uncle whose house was destroyed. Her cousin was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom before she ran to the basement and she ended up outside after the tornado passed wearing only a silk nightie. As of last night, she still didn't know where her car had ended up. It was gone.

It could have been much, much worse, really--small consolation to those who lost everything. If it had come 1 mile further south, into our town proper, there probably would have been multiple deaths and millions more dollars in damage. We're just giving thanks that things are OK for us. We were lucky, really lucky.

Allie asked what would happen if a tornado came again. I told her that tornados don't come very often at all, and now that one came close to us, it will be a long, long time before we see another one. I pray that that's correct.

Allie and I played Snow White this afternoon. Originally, she wanted to play Hide N Seek, but then she decided to watch the movie, and afterwards . . .

To play Snow White, Mommy has to become the evil queen. She looks in the mirror in the bathroom and says the "Mirror, mirror" line, then when she gets the answer, she looks at the beautiful Princess Snow White and strikes her dead with a bolt of evil magic from her fingertips.

She gloats over the dead princess, then turns away to plot and mumble aloud about her next step (something involving a glass coffin, I would assume). And then, magically, Snow White comes back to life and runs away.

The next two rounds involve Snow White running, getting struck by evil magic, waking up and getting away. Then Allie's rules say that the fourth time she's struck, she doesn't wake up.

The evil queen puts a baby blanket over her face (cause it was it the room) and the beautiful princess has to lay there until the evil queen becomes the handsome prince and kisses her awake.

As soon as we've finished one game, Allie immediately wants to switch places and make me die four or so times. After we switch roles twice more, Allie decides that I have to stay dead. I lay dead on the couch (the floor got hard after dying that many times) while she tells me the prince isn't coming.

He isn't? Bummer.