Hello? Hello?

I'm kind of appalled to see how long it's been since I've blogged. I suppose I can summarize the intervening months pretty quickly:

1. Wow, it sure seemed like a good idea to drive 2 days each way to go to a weekend family reunion. What was I thinking? Who would have thought that the wide-open spaces of the Texas Panhandle weren't sufficiently boring to put the child to sleep?

2. Wow, flying to Boise to visit the in-laws wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. And thank God, because the month of August was long--it was good to have a break. Long and hot. And boring. I owe the local PBS station bigtime, because without PBS kids on TV there would have been blood.

3. SweetBabyGirl hates her new school! Loves her new school! Hates it! Loves it!

4. Also: "I don't like Audrey anymore! She's not my friend! She's mean to me!" And repeat, over and over, substituting the names of just about everyone she knows.

What exactly does "being mean" entail? Not doing exactly what SBG says, immediately.

5. "I want to be a skunk for Halloween!"
"No, wait, a mummy!"
"No, wait, a fairy princess!"
"A vampire!"
And so this went on, for the entire month of October.

For the record, she was a skunk at school, then a fairy princess to go trick-or-treating. That is, trick-or-treating at a total of 4 houses, before it got to be too scary.

6. Finally, the weather turned cold, as of this very morning. At which time I had a flat tire on the way to school. And had left my phone at home. I tried to convince SBG that walking a block-and-a-half through the cold wind to the nearest shoot-n-scoot to use the payphone was An Adventure! and she didn't buy it for a second.

Also? She had never seen a payphone in use before. She was all, you put quarters? In the phone? No! Way!