Sigh, sign, or SING!

While it's easy to be disheartened by Obama's continued approval of GMOs (three major crops in the past month!), it's even easier to join the number of people who are still rallying behind organics! In the end, it sugars down to one thing: do you sigh and give up, or sign and go on?

I've been thinking it's time for a written addition to the ongoing Gratitudes List, so here are my latest entries:

#3,586,427*: Making up silly, impromptu songs about daily life, and seeing how long I can keep up a rhyme scheme.

~ Singing said songs, adding a refrain, and remembering it in time for the next chorus!

~ Dance moves. Broadway style.

~ Adding harmonies, call & response, or round/barbershop quartet/doo-wop styles, and getting people to join in.

~ Turning the kitchen into a giant stage until the resident teenager threatens to emancipate herself early or the phone rings.

~ Catching Scott and the kids singing the same songs later.

* - give or take. I may have lost count.

It's a rough life, but somebody has to do it. What are you grateful for?

Winter Changes

Welcome back, everyone!

Modeling Scott's (literal) birthday suit

...And welcome home to me! After three months of travel, Mr. Yates and I are finally back from our first major jaunt together across the country - no small feat! After flying from California (where it finally stopped raining) back to the Frozen Northlands (where it hasn't stopped snowing), we're enjoying some quiet catch-up time with the godkids & company, as I've christened our adopted clan.
Today was a good day for it, too. It was so cold - 24 degrees below zero - that the girls had the day off from school because the school buses couldn't start. Seriously. Needless to say, they were completely heart-broken. :) As for me, I experienced not a one of the usual Vermont urges to put off my writing and go outside to play, and so was remarkably productive. In fact, the only procrastinating I did was to avoid going outside, where we have yet to finish pushing my car out of the snow-bank it was buried in. I didn't mind the wait. It's already taken us two days just to dig a path for it, and I'd rather be covered in kids than ice.

Speaking of the not-so-wee ones, today's gem of a kid comment came from Ms. S, who was listening to one of her sisters and their other nanny talking about foreign phrases they enjoy.
"Ooh, schadenfreude," suggested the nanny. "One of my favorite German words!"
"That's German?" Ms. S wrinkled her nose.
"Sure it is!" Her sister was all too pleased to explain. "It means taking pleasure from someone else's pain."
"I'll have to remember that," murmered Ms. S thoughtfully, and turned away. As she walked by, I heard her repeating her new phrase softly to herself:
"Shot in Florida, Shot in Florida, Shot in Florida..."

This one almost tops one of her younger sister's comments the other day while actually in Florida, where she was vacationing with her moms.
"Why is the water so much warmer here than it is up North?" quizzed her mom, who never misses an opportunity for homeschooling. "They're both part of the Atlantic."
"Mo-om," replied Madame H incredulously, in that particular way she has. "We learned this already. It's because it's closer to Ecuador. Duhh!"
While technically right...

In other (less hilarious) news, I've finally come up with my New Year's resolutions: enroll in aromatherapy school (and thus, stay in one place long enough to help the kids and plants grow), pay off some debts, and actually use some of those products I'm always giving away and selling - now that's a novel idea, huh? Physician, heal thyself (or at least pamper the bejeezus out of thy skin)!

Speaking of herbs, the blog is finally back in action with a few new pages (hooray!), and I'd love any feedback on the new layout. Okee-dokie, pokies - time for this blackbird's daughter to hit the nest. 

Sweet dreams,

Jessica

Funny People

and, for those of us who love good wordplay, I give you Katie. Formerly of the Burlington Katies, don't you know.