It's so cold out, polar bears are offering us cocoa.

I've heard that deep cleansing breathes can help calm you down. My coworker added that I should imagine an empty white room... or soothing scenery... maybe a bear-- a nice bear, not one that wants to maul you... maybe a polar bear; they're cute... a polar bear in a nice, relaxing Tim Horton's... offering you cocoa... and named Mistletoe.

So here it is, your moment of zen:

This is what happens when it's 5 degrees outside.

Michigan winter can be brutal. It's a fact of life. Having grown up in Michigan all my life, I have experienced many of winter's little tricks. My nose has frozen pinched shut. Tears have frozen on my face. I've probably been dangerously close to losing limbs. I've driven in umpteen inches of snow. It is what it is in Michigan.

Last night we had a blizzard. The wind was howling, snow was blowing, and we ended up with a good four or five inches at least.

Dad came home last night and said it was pretty much the iciest ever out, which is a total exaggeration having lived through many an ice storm, but I understood that he meant the roads seriously sucked.

My work never closes-- ever-- so this morning I got up for work and headed into town. You should know, if you don't already, that Michigan is broke, especially my hometown. The plows stopped last night at 8pm because they couldn't keep up and I'd swear on my life that Longway wasn't even looked at for plowing. Needless to say, the roads were thick with snowy ruts.

Driving in snow is a fantastic lesson in physics. Sometimes I'm amazed at how it all works, like when you're going straight then the car swerves a little and you're still going straight even though you're at a 35 degree angle. It's awesome (if it's me and nobody else is around.)

Anyway, I drove like a champion and just about made it to work when realized that I never got gas the other day. In this sort of weather, I'm not taking the risk of a sputtering gas tank. It was 5 degrees out this morning.

I stopped at the gas station that I hate but always go to (a blog for that another time) and pulled up to the pump. I thought, "Wow. That's a mighty frosted pump there," but parked anyway.

I got out, swiped my credit card, and waited.... And waited...

I started poking some buttons, trying to get it to do something more than ask if I want a car wash, and finally gas pump was like, "OMG! It's cold!" and stopped working. It froze. Literally, I think.

So I went inside and asked gas station lady to cancel my thing and she told me to move around to pump 10 or whatever. I move, pump the gas successfully, but then it wouldn't print my receipt. Duh. That should've been obvious.

So I went back inside and the lady was like, "You just wanted to get out of that cold. Can I offer you a free hot chocolate for all the hassle?" 

It occurred to me as I got back into my car that nobody else was at any of the pumps and that I hadn't seen any other cars at the gas station, which is normally busy. She was probably just giving me stuff to thank me for being the only person she's seen all day.  

Once I got to work, a "needy" guy looking for free gloves stopped by and rang the doorbell. I let him in (to look up directions for the place he was really looking for) and the doorbell stuck. For 30 minutes it went on, non-stop, until our exhibit guy came by with a space heater and held it in front of the doorbell to thaw it out. Two computery things freezing in one morning? That's new.

Gotta give props to winter for being so hardcore.

I'm a survivor!

Like most people I know, I am the keeper of a very busy schedule.

I work four days a week, have class two days, try to maintain an online store, and sit on the Board of a local historic house. To cramp my time even more, I've just started another fatigue lapse so I need lots and lots of sleep too.

All this stuff leaves me surprisingly little time to do what I want to do and just veg around the house. Saturdays are usually my day to catch up on the DVR (I really only watch 3 shows) but I get busy so sometimes it's a few weeks before I get the time to watch them all. This week my lazy day was going to be Friday.

So Friday morning I came trotting downstairs, as much as one can trot in the morning, and opened the door to the sunroom (where the DVR set up is) and--

Let me explain something about our sunroom. Our sunroom was an addition to the house a long time ago, and unlike all the other rooms in the house, the sunroom's windows are especially drafty and crappy. This might not be such a big deal except, ya know, it's all windows on three sides. Because it leaks all the heat out, Dad installed a little gas heater in the corner a few years ago.

Anyway, our little heater must've had a little air bubble or something. The point is it didn't work and the room was freezing cold.

I was determined not to let this ruin my plan. So what if it was like 30 degrees in there? I'm a Michigander. I know how to handle cold.

This is what I looked like. (Oh yeah, I forgot I still had glasses on.)

Basically I was a mass of heated insulation. The blanket was covering my face, so when I breathed my glasses would fog, and I was so wrapped that I couldn't fast forward through commercials. Still I managed to watch about 45 minutes of Bones before my nose almost fell off. By then Dad wandered back in and said he'd try to light the heater one last time.

And that's how my survival skills helped me watch TV without getting hypothermia. Yay!

Crazy, crazy, Christmas crazy!

The day started poorly.

My first mistake was forgetting to turn the sound off on my phone before bed. I used to have "Harry Potter" play whenever I got an email but somehow I accidentally deleted it. Too lazy to plug my phone back into my computer, I switched to "Sonic the Hedgehog." "Harry Potter" is easy to sleep through; it's a quiet melody. "Sonic the Hedgehog" is not. Needless to say, every junk email about "Deal of the Day" and "Free Shipping" woke me up through the night. (Are you crazy? Reach over and mute the phone in the middle of the night? The light would hurt my eyes!)

Eventually I rolled out of bed (much later than my alarm clock intended) and dragged my butt into the bathroom to get ready.

Mistake # 2: Taking a bath instead of a shower. (Snooze.)

By the time I was ready, it was about 10 minutes after the time I usually leave. Oops. Still too tired, I decided to forgo the tennis shoes and just wear my slip-on knit shoes (the ones that look like slippers).

That was Mistake #3.

I got to work on time, which was nothing short of a miracle, and decided that I would check to see if my order had come in at the craft store. Tomorrow night is our big holiday celebration and we do free crafts. I had ordered a crap load of googly eyes for some ornaments my place will be making. I thought ahead and ordered these things 2 weeks ago-- I was overdue for a call.

This is what happened:

Apparently when I said my corporation name, they put it under an organization who USED TO BE under us but hasn't been for like a year or more. So the dude on the phone was yelling at me for putting it under the wrong name, and I was snapping back because, duh, they aren't part of us anymore.

What happened was this: I placed an order for a million googly eyes. Googly eyes came in. Store called place that isn't us. Place that isn't us picked up my order knowing they hadn't ordered them.

This started an absurd amount of detective work that, quite frankly, left me distressed (after all, I haven't been reimbursed for said googly eyes yet.)

Keep in mind, I only have one day to find these things.

After much rigamarole, I learned that the lady who picked them up had delivered them to another place altogether. So I called the other place, explained the mix-up, and the lady said, "Oh... we ordered some too." Talk about a coincidence. How many people around here order googly eyes in bulk?? Answer: A lot.

With all that straightened out, I decided I had better walk over and get my googly eyes before someone else got a hold of them. On my way out the door, I noticed the Christmas tree in the gallery was not lit up. Last week it was looking very dim so poo-- our Christmas tree is burned out.

No way.

If this happened Wednesday, who'd care? But the day before the holiday thing? No way.

At this point, I was feeling emo. What else could go wrong? I scuffed down the street, headed toward my googly eyes, and realized something:

Today was a horrible day to wear slip-on knit shoes.

I walked along the sidewalk, slush seeping into my stupid knit shoes, my socks soaking wet from the snow, and hated myself for not driving (Mistake #4).

I have little legs so a 3 minute walk took me about 8, then I slushed back through the snow, arguing with a fat squirrel who was barking at me from a tree, totally disgruntled by this run-around, when I saw our grounds dude way up on a lift, stringing replacement lights in the trees.

"Dude!" said I. "Do you have extra lights I can use? My Christmas tree burned out!"

And down from the heavens came a box of Christmas lights *foomp!* in the snow.

Giddy that I didn't have to run to the store, I cut across the totally unshoveled plaza toward my office. Then I remembered my shoes again. Mistake #5.

Two major soakers later, I hauled the skinny Christmas tree through two doors and into my office, ala the Grinch, and plugged in the lights.

And the lights worked!

Overjoyed at the amount of time that saves, I carried the tree back out to the gallery and plugged them in.

And they did not work.

As it turns out, the extension cord was plugged in at the ceiling to avoid trip-hazard wires all over the floor. Of all the track-lighting in the place, that particular track was bad. One seriously whiny phone call later, the exhibit guy came over, and after about four more hours, only 6 of the 27 lights are working but my tree lights up so I don't really care.

Grounds dude came by for another problem we were having and I returned the box of lights he had given to/thrown at me. In my total rush of excitement that my problems were wrapping up (and probably also because a crazy high dose of Vitamin B12 was finally kicking in), I finished putting up the garland that I'd put off for about 2 weeks. Finally this place is almost up-to-par.

Assuming a Christmas catastrophe doesn't occur tomorrow, we should be all set for Christmas Crazy Day!

I'm calling you out, Hangman game on my phone.

Listen, Hangman game on my phone:

When I downloaded you the other day, it was for a bit of brainless fun. After a few rounds, it was abundantly clear that I'm not smart enough for you, so I switched to the kids' setting.

We have a problem, Hangman game on my phone. I don't know where you're from but kids around here don't know half those words. Under "animals" there shouldn't be words like bandicoot or bunting. A bunting's a bird? I thought it was something to do with fabric! And really, what kid would guess "Sao Paulo" or "Helsinki" for cities? Or "Luxembourg" or "Botswana" for countries? Whatever happened to words like "cow" or "bear," words that kids actually know? Why did you choose "cobra" when you could've gone with "snake"? The R-S-T-L-N-E Wheel of Fortune strategy doesn't work with you. You've got me so jacked in the head, that I'm guessing things like "gibbon." I'm 27 years old and failing at Kid Mode!

Oh, and on the occasion when I do get one right, you've got some nerve to patronize me with "congratz!" CongratZ? You aren't even spelling it right!! Is that how you win, making up words and creating new spellings?

I'm onto you, Hangman game on my phone. I took pictures to prove your crookedness.

Like this one: Since when is a "phoebe" a bird???

Regrettably I was unable to get a picture of the four-letter word, an animal:  _EA_. You're lucky my phone crashed, probably because its computer brain exploded before mine could. What do you mean it didn't have a "b" or an "r"?? What the heck else could it be??

I'm done with you, Hangman game on my phone.

And on that note, I quit as a winner. VICTORY IS MINE!

Christmas crafty!

I've been working on some personalized Christmas presents today. I haven't wrapped them yet but I couldn't very well draw what I'm making!

This is my evil cackle.

I do this a lot. You should know what I look like when I'm cackling.