Thank you, Julie, for adding me to Dot Moms. I’ve loved your site for a long time, and to be included with all those excellent writers and fabulous moms was a boost I needed badly. I’ll probably be the “extreme contrast” since I’m hardly the poster-mom-type person. I’ve been comic relief for other people most of my life in just about any category you could think of.

Except my own life. In my own life I’m often a hair in my own eye.

Something cool: I’ve sold so many old books and stuff on Ebay, that my PayPal account is looking pretty good. I’m doing most of our Christmas online with my PayPal excess. It’s a good feeling, and one I don’t feel all that much lately.

My daughter is on her way back down from Ann Arbor. I make her call me to check in every few hours (she might be in her twenties now but she’s still MINE to worry over!!!) and I just hung up the phone from her first on-the-road check-in-to Mom call. She was telling me about the Yankee Candle she and her friends were drooling over at the Coachhouse in the mall. It’s called “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and it smells like a man.

The Yankee Candle people are making a candle that smells like a ‘really good man’s aftershave.’ A candle that smells like a man.

All I can say is, it’s about time.

My son is here, to get some help in math from his father. It’s after 3:00 in the afternoon but he’s still downstairs asleep. I’m not going to go down there and wake him up, either. He’s on the run all week long, going to school and working, and on weekends his body just shuts down and he NEEDS that coma-like sleep. Besides, I completely understand the feeling. I’ve only been up about an hour myself.

How long does leftover turkey stay good in the refrigerator? I still have a bag of it left from last week. It smells all right. I might take a chance. . . . .

Then again, maybe we’ll just go out for pizza, as we do almost every Sunday. My sweet MIL loves to take us out, and we love to go. It’s a match made in heaven.

I really should be grading all those quizzes and essays that are beginning to pile up in my home office (AKA the living room sofa) but I’d rather be blogging. It’s an addiction far more serious than crack cocaine. My computer is in my husband’s home office (AKA our son’s former room before he moved out) and there’s no place for my stuff in here. My computer is in here only because they’re networked.

I have to have those grades on the school computer by tomorrow. I suppose I’d best get crackin’ on them.

But first, a sandwich.

Update on knees: really painful today. And you know those Advil ads that promise relief? Lies. Those ads are lies. I might as well have downed some Sweetarts.

Mmm, Sweetarts. . . . .

I’m going to go grade some stuff, eat some stuff, and listen to some Christmas stuff, and then I’ll no doubt be back.

Be careful not to fall off your chairs, as I know you’ll all be sitting on the very edge in anticipation of my return.

Right.