For the last couple of nights I’ve gotten in the bed really early; I’ve just felt a little congested and tired and sinus-y and whatnot. However, since I’ve struggled a little bit with insomnia lately, I didn’t worry too much about the fact that I wasn’t feeling quite normal because THE SLEEP, OH MY WORD THE SLEEP, IT HAS BEEN SO GLORIOUS. In fact, last night it wasn’t even 10 o’clock when I drifted off to sleep while listening to the melodious sounds of Alyssa Milano talking about a lather-free shampoo hair care system.

And yes, that totally means that I was watching an infomercial. Aye, and proudly.

However, in my defense, I have long been drawn to infomericals that feature exciting new hair care products. For example, does anyone remember the Lori Davis system in the 90s? I never ordered it, of course, but it appeared to work miracles in the areas of de-frizzing and manageability. Plus, Cher was featured on the Lori Davis infomerical, and her presence alone was enough to make a believer out of my early-20s self. I mean, hello? Did you see Cher’s post-makeover hair in Moonstruck? It was SPECTACULAR.

Anyway (SWEET MERCY how I ramble), when I woke up this morning I wasn’t feeling well at all, and by lunchtime I had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad headache. I typically only get headaches when I have a sinus infection, so I decided to go ahead and call the doctor like the grown-up I am and make an appointment for him to drill holes under my eyes in the hopes that that would relieve a little bit of the pressure. Not that I was feeling a sense of urgency or anything. And I certainly wasn’t going to insist that he drill holes under my eyes. I would have been just as happy for him to make good use of a small but effective anvil.

I showed up for my appointment a little early, and thankfully the nurse called me back right away. A few minutes later my doctor came into the exam room and grabbed his trusty head lamp and some sort of prong-y implement so that he could see what was going on with my sinuses. He initially looked so alarmed by the state of my sinus cavities that I halfway wanted him to scream “SWEET FANCY MOSES” just to lighten the mood a bit, but it only took him about six seconds to figure out that I do indeed have a mighty lively sinus infection. Even better was the fact that when the doctor was trying to see what was going on, he used the prong thing to press down on an area that must be really swollen because, y’all, when I inhaled I felt a WHOOSH of air surge through my right nasal passage, and I’ll tell you what: IT WAS REFRESHING.

LIKE A COOL MOUNTAIN BREEZE, IT WAS.

Long story endless: I got a shot and a prescription and my head feels so much better already. As much as I don’t like taking medicine (a trait I come by honest, thanks to my daddy), it’s just the nicest thing ever when the medicine starts to work. Very grateful for that.

And if you’ll bear with me, I’d now like to share something that’s completely unrelated to all that stuff that I just told you. Not that the lack of any sort of cohesive narrative structure has ever stopped me before.

I was in junior high, I think, when “Footloose” came out. I remember going to see it at the theatre with my youth group, but the main thing I remember about that night is that my youth group friends Hallie and Beverly talked ALL. THE. WAY. THROUGH. THE. MOVIE. And I don’t mean that they whispered. I mean that they hooted and yelled and laughed hysterically. I have a vivid memory of Hallie turning around to have a conversation with someone who was about three rows behind her, but the movie? Sort of foggy. As much as I adored the soundtrack and knew every single word of every single song, my only lasting mental images from the movie are John Lithgow screaming the word “PIT” in his sermons and the last dance scene. The end.

Inspiring, isn’t it?

Well, yesterday someone reminded me of a real “Footloose” treasure – A TREASURE, I TELL YOU – and when I watched it I was overcome with delight and joy and merriment and thanksgiving. Oh, today’s movies might have more sophisticated scripts and better special effects and superior production values, but I dare say they cannot touch 80’s movies in the area of The Angry Dance. They can’t come close. Because this angry dance? From “Footloose”? IT IS EPIC.

Please do to enjoy.

That’s poetry in motion, my friends. Poetry set to the music of a sah-weet saxophone.

It just doesn’t get any better. And personally I think we should all walk away from Kevin Bacon’s Angry Dance and feel a renewed sense of determination to perfect our aerial (and also one-handed) cartwheels.

It’s the least we can do to honor his Angry Dance legacy.

IT’S THE LEAST WE CAN DO.

Love,
Me

The overwhelming collective opinion around these parts was that I should give the new American Idol a try. And so that is exactly what I did. For the most part y’all said that you were pleasantly surprised by the new judges, and after watching the first episode, I would definitely agree with that assessment. Plus, last night’s show featured the first breakout superstar of this AI season: Jennifer Lopez’s hair. MY WORD IT’S GLORIOUS.

Honestly, I thought I’d abandoned my J-Lo hair obsession back in 2003 because, well, Gigli. But I am here to tell you that last night’s AI premiere has fanned a flame of hair envy for which I was not prepared. Her hair is spectacular, isn’t it? It’s so very long and lustrous and shiny. And I’ll tell you something else: I’m not exactly sure what day-to-day activities are the norm on Jenny’s block, but I’m thinking that deep conditioning is pretty high on the list.

Hair obsession aside, I thought Jennifer Lopez was a comforting, maternal presence. She was kind. She wasn’t silly. And she came across as very real and very funny and very likeable. I’m still not completely sure about Steven Tyler, but he was definitely quirky (in a good way). More than anything, I didn’t miss the contentiousness between the judges, and I thought there was a lot of talent among the kids. So, you know, I’m in.

Next thing.

This afternoon I was in the kitchen, just starting to pull out everything I needed to get supper ready, and I turned on Food Network to keep me company. After a few minutes I decided that I wasn’t terribly interested in whatever was on, so I called down the hall and asked Alex if he’d like to come sit on the counter and read me a book while I chopped some tomatoes. He was all about it. After he found the book he wanted to read, he walked in the kitchen, and when he saw the TV was on (I don’t normally watch much TV in the afternoons), he grinned at me and said, “Mama? You need to turn off that TV and LEARN THE WAYS OF NATURE.”

I have no idea where that came from, but I thought it was hilarious. I have a feeling he was paying tribute to my daily reminders that it’s time TO TURN OFF THAT TV AND GO PLAY OUTSIDE.

But let’s face it: “learn the ways of nature” sounds so much better.

I just hope the ways of nature involve air conditioning in the summertime and some complimentary peppermint mochas in the winter.

Really, it’s the least the nature could do.

It seems like every few years the insomnia and I have us a mighty fine battle.

And for the last few nights? The insomnia has been KICKING MY TAIL.

You’ll be happy to know, however, that I don’t have any intention of sticking around here today and boring you with 500 words about how tired I am. I just want to throw a few links your way and then continue thinking about all the sleep I hope to get tonight.

I’m nothing if not optimistic.

– Please keep Joanne Heim (The Simple Wife) in your prayers – and her family, too.

– Mandi Mapes is a deeply gifted singer/songwriter who’s on the worship staff at our church. She’s also CUTE AS A BUTTON. I love her heart, I love her desire to make much of God, and I love her new CD. I think you will, too.

– Lindsay’s post about check writers at the grocery store? Oh, yes ma’am.

– There are only four more days to enter the Reebok $100 Visa gift card giveaway. Time’s-a-wastin’!

– Only six more days left in the BlackBerry Style giveaway – I’m giving away two sassy cell phones that come complete with a month’s service from Sprint.

– This article about a heartbreak shared by SEC basketball coaches Billy Donovan, John Pelphrey and Anthony Grant brought tears to my eyes. So touching. (via C-L)

– A little over a month ago I went to a Compassion Bloggers reunion dinner here in Birmingham. It was one of the top five favorite nights of my life (the joy went so deep that I haven’t figured out how to write about it yet). One of the people there was Dan Woolley. Dan is a great guy who works with Compassion; you may remember that last year, after the earthquake in Haiti, he was trapped for several days in an elevator at the Hotel Montana. Well, Dan is actually back in Haiti for the anniversary of the earthquake, and you can read his thoughts and reactions over on the Compassion Haiti website. There’s so much good stuff there. And it’s a great reminder to keep the people of Haiti in our prayers.

Well, I’m sitting here watching Auburn and Oregon in the National Championship game, and there’s about five minutes left, which I figure is plenty of time for me to crank out a blog post and distract myself from the end of the game. Because THE NERVES, OH MY WORD, THE NERVES. I realize that I don’t really have a dog in the fight, of course, but it’s the National Championship game and sort of a big deal and one of the teams will be heartbroken at the end and oh my goodness why didn’t I just save my nervous system the anguish and watch “The Bachelor” instead?

Come to think of it, “The Bachelor” would have been certain anguish, too. Just an entirely different variety.

*****

Now it’s about 20 minutes after I started this post, and my plan didn’t work. The end of the game got so crazy that I had no choice but to stand up and pace. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if Mississippi State ever finds itself in a similar national title situation, I would not be able to handle it. I would vacuum myself straight to the emergency room, where I would admit myself and push my vacuum to the side of the examination table and then lie there quietly until Sister texted me to tell me the score of the game and that it was all going to be okay. That’s the only way I’d survive it.

And speaking of hospitals and sports (there’s a transition, huh?), have I ever told y’all the story about when I was watching State in the SEC basketball tournament championship the Sunday after Alex was born? I was still in the hospital, and the little guy was all of two days old, and the Bulldogs were playing the Kentucky Wildcats. I was still hooked up to some IVs and monitors and whathaveyou, so I was fairly limited in terms of my motion while watching the game. I couldn’t pace, couldn’t vacuum (obviously), couldn’t obsessively wash and fold clothes – I just had to lie there and watch and occasionally cheer. But do you know that I got so riled up just lying there that I set off the alarm on the blood pressure monitor at least three different times? OH YES I DID.

What can I say? MAMA HAS SOME ISSUES.

Anyway, I didn’t hit that level of interest and/or stress watching tonight’s National Championship game, but I did very much enjoy that the outcome was settled in the final few seconds. I always get nervous when a game comes down to a field goal – my codependency sets in and I become VERY CONCERNED for the field goal kicker and start to think about all the regret he’ll have to live with if he doesn’t make the kick and how all the other players will try to act like it’s no big deal, you couldn’t help it, you didn’t mean to miss the kick, but way deep down the other players will resent the kicker like crazy because THAT’S HIS ONLY JOB. TO KICK THE BALL THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS. HE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE TO LEARN THE PLAYS.

See? I might need to find a hobby. So that I can stop worrying about potential outcomes in hypothetical football-related scenarios.

I have to say, though, that tonight I didn’t really think about the Auburn kicker as much as I normally would. He’s been reliable all season, so I felt like he’d hold up well under the pressure. And really, the thing that captured my interest the most when it was all said and done was not the post-kick celebration – it was something that Cam Newton did right before he ran onto the field to celebrate Auburn’s victory.

HE USED HIS TOWEL AS A CAPELET.

It delighted and confused me all at the same time. Some of you may remember that we recently had a Capelet Experience of our own, so I was really sort of tickled (albeit puzzled) that Cam would go with the capelet option on what was certainly the most memorable football victory of his life. Because it wasn’t like he just happened to be holding a towel and hung it around his neck for the sake of convenience. He took the time to shake it out. To place it. To make sure it was just like he wanted it.

I have no idea why, of course. But I wondered if maybe at some point in his early teenage years Cam had dreamed about what it might be like to win a National Championship, and maybe somewhere in that mental picture he oh-so-casually had a towel draped across his shoulders in a devil-may-care but distinctively capelet-esque fashion. I know that when I was 13 or 14 I used to picture how I might look when I finally had a driver’s license and was hanging out after Sunday night church with my car keys in one hand and my purse in the other, chatting all grown-up like with my friends and HOLDING MY OWN KEYCHAIN WITH MY VERY OWN CAR KEYS, and as a result of all that daydreaming I’m sure I eventually adopted some of those behaviors when I had my real-live license and my real-live keys.

Perhaps the same can be said of Cam and his towel capelet.

Regardless, Cam clearly had some goals for this football season. And tonight? Well, I’m pretty sure that the last of his dreams for this season came true.

SEC Championship? Check.

Heisman Trophy? Check.

National Championship? Check.

Rockin’ the post-game towel capelet? OH, CHECK IT.

Congratulations, Auburn!

And rock on, SEC.

OH, people. We are in the throes of a WINTER WEATHER EVENT here in north central Alabama. So far that means that we’ve gotten about 1/4 inch of freezing rain and a light dusting of snow. But listen – that 1/4 inch of freezing rain is a big deal here. Roads are closed, and our driveway is so slick right now that if I got a good running start at the top of it, I could set some personal best times sledding down it. Not that we keep official records for sledding down our driveway, of course. Though we would certainly entertain the possibility if there were some shiny medals involved.

The mere prospect of winter weather in Alabama just brings me untold delight. I mean, we (and by “we,” I mean EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO LIVES IN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY) just lose our dadgum minds. Friday afternoon I went to the grocery store so that I could round up all the essentials, and while I’m not positive, I’m fairly certain that a good two-thirds of the people in this area converged on the grocery store at the exact same time. It was like grocery shopping at Thanksgiving, only the sense of urgency was MUCH! GREATER! Because I’ll tell you what: if we’re going to be trapped in our house for two days while we shelter ourselves from the elements, then by diggity we’re going to have a family-size bag of Doritos, an assortment of Pringles and a 24-pack of Diet Coke.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE PIONEERS SURVIVED ALL THOSE HARSH WINTERS?

After I secured all the necessary foodstuffs, we settled in for one of the nicest, most relaxing weekends I can remember. Saturday we ate lunch at Chuy’s (I have a deep and abiding fondness for their oven roasted chicken chili rellenos), ran a few errands, then came home and built a fire and rested. Just hung out. DELIGHTFUL. I made a big pot of Melanie’s tortilla soup for supper, and it was, in a word, DELICIOUS. Even D liked it, and he does not typically regard soup as a meal. He sees it as more of an appetizer. Or maybe even a hot beverage. But he was a fan of this particular tortilla soup recipe, so I’ll definitely fix it again. In this house it’s critical to seize any and all soup-making opportunities, you know.

Today after church we ran by the store ONE MORE TIME. I felt like it would be good to have some ground beef so that if we lost power I could pull a Ma Ingalls and cook some meat in a cast iron skillet over the fire (AS I SO OFTEN DO), and we’ve been home ever since. Right now I have a big pot of black beans on the stove (in addition to the sledding records, I’m apparently trying to set some cooking records, too), and as soon as I publish this post, I’m going to turn off the stove, climb under the covers and listen to the freezing rain hit the leaves outside the window.

(Aaaaaand suddenly I sound like I’m smack-dab in the middle of a Mitford novel.)

(Maybe Father Tim will brave the elements and show up at our front door tomorrow morning to help us find our missing cat.)

(The fact that we don’t actually have a cat or a priest named Father Tim is completely inconsequential.)

So that’s pretty much it from our neck of the woods. Sleet, snow, soup and crazy.

Mighty big fun indeed.

For the last four or five months I’ve been thinking about doing a re-design for the blog. And if that last sentence makes you think that I’m the one who’s going to be doing the re-designing, BE YE NOT FOOLED. WordPress scares the fire out of me in that regard, mainly because there have been several times when my attempts at code editing have resulted in my right sidebar moving to the center and my posts starting so far down the page that the sheer volume of scrolling would cause a carpal-tunnel flare-up.

Not to mention that time when I made Melanie’s blog blow up.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details – mainly because I don’t understand them – but as part of the process of trying to figure out what I want design-wise, this afternoon I uploaded a new WordPress theme to some folders that control some things, and as a result of the uploading my shoulder blades feel like they’re made of cinder blocks. Quite frankly I’m just not cut out for activities that require instructional videos. I do feel a sense of accomplishment when I get to the end of the instructions and realize that THE PROCESS DID NOT BEAT ME, but still. It stresses me out. And it’s taken three hours for my nerves to return to normal after that whole file-uploading thing.

(Maybe I need to dial it back a notch or eight on the caffeine.)

(Also: I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes I have a tendency to overdramatize when I’m required to do tech-related tasks.)

(That’s only because – as Rachel Zoe would say – tech-related tasks are LITERALLY A NIGHTMARE.)

The good news is that auto correct on Melanie’s phone saved the afternoon. Mel and I were texting about my bloggy woes, and she mentioned that it’s tough to know how to handle the techy stuff when you don’t know everything about WordPress. Only her phone auto corrected “WordPress.”

Which is why I got a text that said something along the lines of “It’s tough when you don’t know everything about worrywart.”

So Mel tried to fix the mistake, but her auto correct beat her to it, and then I got another message that said, “It’s tough when you don’t know everything about Witchweed.”

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

By the way, if you happen to have any ideas for things / features / bells / whistles that would make this here blog easier to navigate or more functional on your end, feel free to chime in with your suggestions in the comments. I have a good-sized list of things I’d like to change, but I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed or haven’t noticed.

And if you need to find me, I’ll be huddled up under a blanket watching Bravo. It’s my gift to myself. And to my shoulders.

Have a great weekend, y’all!
_____________________________________________________

Earlier today I posted a new BlackBerry Style giveaway. I’m giving away two phones, and you can find all the details right over here.