Brass Spheres and a Monkey

Holy Crap it's cold! The temperature has taken a serious dive this week! Last night we had precipitation that could reasonably be called "snow," if you didn't know what snow was supposed to really look like. Whatever it was, it was white, it was falling from the sky, and it was cold as hell.

But when I think of snow, I think of REAL snow. Here's a great link to a video of a dog playing in the snow that.... if it doesn't make you smile.... you're dead.

http://www.dogwork.com/dogsnow/

Anyway... there was a tiny bit of snow on the ground this morning and Grayson was all kinds of excited about it, despite the bone-cracking cold and wind.

I am a horrifying failure at Christmas shopping this year. Granted, I think I have a half-way decent excuse for being somewhat distracted, but really the time has come to get my act together and start making a list and checking it twice.

Grayson is strangely difficult to buy for this year. Primarily this is because all he cares or thinks about is SPORE. And Spore has no new games, so I'm reduced to buying him an overpriced Spore T-shirt online.

He has a room full of toys he never plays with. I truly believe I could have saved myself the hassle of unpacking half of that stuff ... just taken it straight to Good Will, and he wouldn't know the difference. He plays on his computer, he watches TV, and he plays Nintendo DS. Other than that, the toy interactions are fairly slim.

Sigh. Just last week he asked me when he was going to get his own iPod! I told him when he could save up $245!

We are on a losing streak lately when it comes to getting Grayson to school on time.

I think this is the cats' fault.

When I had Kobi and Flower, I got up every morning at 6:30 to take them "walkies" before I got Grayson up. There was no avoiding getting up with Kobi in the house. She's way better than an alarm clock. She climbs up onto your chest and runs her tongue up inside your nose until you get out of bed.

The cats, however, are no help at all. They're even lazier than I am. So I set the alarm for 7 a.m. and hit the snooze until 7:20. By that time I'm already doomed. There is no way to get Grayson up, dressed, fed, coifed and accoutred by 7:45, which is the time we HAVE to leave for school if we're going to be on time. So we cruise out of the house by about 7:55, which means we get Grayson to school 11 to 15 minutes late, which means he has to stop in the office and get a tardy slip before reporting to class.

Then, to compound the problem, half the time I haven't had time to get dressed myself, so I am then obliged to go back to the apartment and take a shower before I can go to work.

Tomorrow, I mean it, Tomorrow we're getting up early enough to be on time!