random musings

1. When I got home from Chicago on Friday night, I was delighted to wake up on Saturday morning to the honking of geese. The Geese of White Gables. How fairy tale-ish does that sound? Mac and I have taken great pleasure in counting them every morning in the pond in front of our house and again every afternoon after school on the way home. We listen for their honking early in the morning and again at night.

I heard them this morning but they were nowhere to be seen when we drove to school. Where have the Geese of White Gables gone? When I came back from dropping off Mac at school, I saw a handful of them but nothing close to our normal population. I am devastated if they've taken off for parts farther south (or even other ponds in White Gables). Maybe they've just taken cover for this windy, possibly tornadic weather we're going to have?

2. Speaking of tornadic weather, Mac had a field trip scheduled for today to Middleton Plantation and I was going as a chaperone. Sadly, because of bad weather here, they canceled the field trip. Which is a good thing, of course, in the event that we do get this awful weather. And a good thing in terms of the number of things I need to do before WE GO TO ENGLAND IN ONE WEEK! But not such a good thing, I'd imagine, if you're the teacher who now has 16 disappointed children.

3. Speaking of more bad weather, I am so glad I'm back from the Midwest with that awful blizzard moving through. I loved the light, big-flake snow I saw falling in Chicago last week and don't need to see a foot of snow dumped. Two photos from my trip last week (left photo shows the incomparable Gisele and Flavio (and the comparable me) at Navy Pier before the snow came in ) and the second is taken of the snow blowing around from inside the Cheesecake Factory at the Hancock Building).




4. Speaking of snow, I need our dear friends Monique and Donald, who are gracious enough to let us camp out at their house in London before and after we go to the Cotswolds, to arrange for snow in London but preferably in the Cotswolds because I might have told Mac I was positive we'd have a white Christmas. He even told the pediatrician at his well-child checkup yesterday that he couldn't get a flu shot before the trip for fear he'd have a sore arm that would hinder his snowball-throwing ability.

So Monique and Donald, the pressure's on you. Stop global warming in the next week, rent a snow-making machine for us, import some snow from Switzerland, lay down a lot of white cotton balls. Whatever it takes, it doesn't matter. I need snow. For heavens sake, if we'd gone to Dubai (which was our initial Christmas plan), we'd have had snow at that indoor snowskiing mountain they've got there. Surely if Dubai-ians (or whatever they're called) can see snow on Christmas in the desert, my kid can see snow on Christmas in rural England.

5. I think the best Christmas commercials on tv right now are the Target commercials. Those ones before Thanksgiving of the "perfect woman" doing stuff like pulling two full shopping carts up a hill in training for Black Friday made me laugh out loud. I know you don't care what I think about Target marketing, but I would shop there just based on the ads. Good thing for Target I'm already a loyal customer and already spend an inordinate amount of time and money there.