Please vote for me. I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.

This time last week we were three feet deep in snow. Today, the temperature is in the sixties and even the mountains of snow at the edges of parking lots are gone. As I type, it is pouring down rain, and the lightning and thunder are spectacular.

I don’t remember the weather ever being this weird before.

The snow, inconvenient as it was, was more normal for January than warm rain.

It probably means we’re all going to die.

Moving right along. . . . .

The family party at my sister’s house was fun. Hub couldn’t go but I rode up with my mom and my uncle. A few miles from home, my cell phone rang; it was Belle, and she wanted to go, too. So we picked her up on the way, and the four of us went to the party. My other sister and her family arrived soon after, and, as is the custom for any kind of gathering in this family, the food started appearing and then disappearing rapidly. All kinds of lucious fattening morsels, washed down by diet pop of various kinds. It’s all in the balance, you know.

Both of my sisters have beautiful homes, but there is something about this particular sister’s house that I love. Maybe it’s the books, and the music.

And the poltergeist who knocked the picture clean off the wall, barely missing my uncle’s head.

My sister mentioned that she had never deleted any cookies from her computer, nor run any kind of ad-aware check. So I showed her how to do both, and we were absolutely blown away by the amount of crud on her computer. I’m not an expert by anybody’s definition, but recently I’ve learned the benefits of a firewall; I hope all of you have one. Having lived through an unbelievable hijacking, I don’t want any of you to ever have to deal with one. Get a firewall. Please.

When I am with Hub’s family, I am the tallest person in the room. (next to Hub, who is nearly seven feet tall.) With my own family, I am the shortest. Belle and Zappa are both tall.

Hub’s mother is barely five feet tall. How she could ever have produced a person as tall as Hub is beyond my imagination. When they stand side by side, it’s actually comical. Like a photograph you might see in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Or the Guinness Book.

Genetics. What a funky bit of odds. Probability, with a personality.

It rained so hard on the trip home, we could barely see the road. The fog was thick, too.

But here I am at last, safe and dry (except for the bottoms of my jeans) (not MY bottom) and doing my favorite thing: blogging. Which means, I am conversing with friends that I can not see with my eyes, but whom I can see with a combination of their words and mine.

Charley Gordon is so desperate for attention, he keeps batting my hands off the keyboard. He’s not to be bribed away by food, either. It’s petting he wants, and it’s petting he intends to get. And he will. Just not quite yet.

Him is the loviest cat in the world, him is. When he’s not slashing you to ribbons, that is.

Or hiding under the futon in the guest room, lest he be discovered and persuaded to go outside for the night. And when I say “persuaded,” what I really mean is “picked up and forcibly tossed out the door.” Semantics.

The deer are thick out in the sticks where we live. This morning there was a HUGE deer standing by my car. I think he was looking at it a little dewy-eyed. Stranger things have happened. . . . . Heaven knows we could use a little compact.

I am very, very sleepy. And I have a bad cold. Repercussions from breathing all the dog dander the other night, too. I should have bought some Nyquil at Meijer tonight. I was too excited over my new pink sweater, and the 75% off Christmas stuff to think of it.

After-Christmas sales are great, but I always feel sorry for Christmas things that are left over. Whenever I see unwanted trees on a lot, my heart just breaks. In this town, trees are free on Christmas Eve. Even then, there is always at least one left over.

And after Christmas, on the highway, there are always discarded trees on the side of the road. There is something about that sight, that brings tears to my eyes. It’s like the Anderson fairy tale, about the Christmas tree in the attic. Hans Christian Anderson stories always made me cry when I was little. They still do.

Am I sentimental? Or am I just embarassing? My enquiring mind wants to know.