Justin Timberlake's personal wedding planner?

I don't have many dreams at night.  Or, if I do, I don't remember them very often.  But last night's was crystal clear... and crazy.

In my dream last night, I was on vacation at a tropical place.  Just me.  Not sure where my husband and daughter were, but I guess I left them at home.  That makes me feel guilty today, but during my dream last night, I was alone, on vacation, with a svelte enough body to enjoy being on the beach, without a single responsibility, and I was enjoying myself.

To dream that you are on vacation, indicates that you need a break to recharge your energies and revitalize yourself. You need to break out of your daily routine and do something different.  To dream that you are relaxing on a beach, signifies that the coming weeks will be calm and tranquil for you. Your stress will be alleviated and you will find peace of mind. DreamMoods.com.

Justin Timberlake was also at this tropical resort, with his girlfriend who coincidentally also happens to be a co-worker of mine in real life.  I never, ever think about Justin Timberlake and rarely interact with this co-worker, so why they were the subject of my dream, only my subconscious knows.

But Justin and I were buds in this dream, and he asked me to please plan and organize a grand marriage proposal for the two of them while they were on vacation.  It seemed the most natural thing in the world, so I organized the whole thing.  (Here's how grand it was: We were at a concert, and I had one of the ushers bring the ring over in a small box. LAME.)

To dream that you are good friends with a celebrity, represents your idealized version of someone you know in your life. Perhaps you hope that a real-life friend can act more like a particular celebrity. Consider the qualities that you see in this celebrity and how you want your friends to have those qualities. DreamMoods.com

Justin was so impressed that he asked me to please also plan and organize their grand wedding, because they were going to go ahead and get married real quick while they were on vacation.

Whaaaat?  Fact: I HATED planning for my wedding.  Hated it with a passion.  Luckily, my Mom was willing to be my personal wedding planner for basically the entire shindig; otherwise, the temptation to just elope might have been too irresistible.

Fortunately, I never reached the wedding.  Who knows how lame the wedding would have been, based on how super lame the proposal was. Besides, I'll take being woken up by my daughter crawling into bed with me on Sunday morning over crazy dreams any day.

To dream of a marriage, signifies commitment, harmony or transitions. You are undergoing an important developmental phase in your life.  DreamMoods.com

Layout mock-ups for Crystal's site

Having completed some high level content and audience analysis with Crystal in the past couple weeks, this week I've been in all-out design mode for her new site.  I have three different layout mock-ups, and would love to know your favorite.  I added a new poll in the right sidebar of this blog, asking which layout is your favorite.  Is it:

Layout #1

Layout #2

or Layout #3?

Please go to the poll in the right sidebar and vote!  Note: The boxes with the X's in them will be an image of some kind.

Thanks for participating!

Getting past the writer's block

My life as I knew it pretty much halted while I was sick, and I've found it to be a very slow process to get everything in my life back up to speed like it was just a couple weeks ago.  I hadn't been sick like this in several years, and I didn't take it very well, for whatever reason.  Being eight months pregnant probably didn't help.

So I needed to write a blog post just to write something again.  I have no clever topic -- not even a non-clever topic in mind.  But I need to write a post, because if I don't, I'm afraid this blog is going to lapse into stagnation like my (what feels like) hundreds of other blogs and journals before it, and I'd be disappointed.  I really want this one to stick.

For those concerned parties out there, I'm feeling better, by the way.  I'm taking my last antibiotic tomorrow morning.  My cough is slowly but surely dwindling to nothing, and my congestion is about gone.  Whew.

My daughter and I had a fun time blowing bubbles in the house this evening.  It was too cold and rainy to go outside, so we had our own springtime indoors, followed by rocky road ice cream of course (sweetened with Splenda so I had some too).  She's getting so big, so smart, so very fast.  My heart just breaks with love and admiration for her on a daily basis.  Not sure how it's going to be possible to love two little people this much.  How does one heart hold so much?  It's almost impossible to comprehend.

Yesterday, I started reading a women's devotional Bible I purchased awhile ago (could actually be an entire year ago now).  It's one of those Bibles that has daily devotions and prayers, and guides you through reading the entire Bible in a year.  As I started the journey yesterday, it made me wonder, how is the devotions author going to make the more "historical" sections of the Bible spiritually relevant?  You know, the parts about who descended from whom, that seem to go on and on.  I'm curious, but don't know enough about the Bible to know how to skip ahead to one of those sections to see (hence my taking on this endeavor in the first place), so time will have to tell.  I will wait patiently.

Well, exhaustion is taking over, so I will give in and go to bed.  Tomorrow's only Wednesday?  I find myself looking forward to eight weeks of maternity leave a lot lately, even though it means sleepless nights once again.  It'll be a special time.

Head Cold Haiku

Biting pre-Spring air 

The snot in my nose 

- it's frozen 

Bag of cotton balls 

Each and every one removed 

Shoved into my brain 

Indulgent softness 

Extra kindness and care 

My Kleenex 

An endless Spring river 

Pours from my eyes and nostrils 

Where is the source? 

My own snoring 

- I wake up 

Mouth so dry 

Morning tea

It's 6am.  I don't have to be at work for another hour yet, but I've been up since 4am with a runny nose, so I'm taking advantage of the quiet time by enjoying a mug of Earl Grey.  If you were sitting here with me at my kitchen table, I would offer you some and we would wake up together.

If you were joining me for tea, you would probably laugh at my deep, raspy, cold-laden voice.  I sound like I should be hosting a midnight radio show on the light jazz radio station.  How do I know this if I'm sitting by myself?  I tried it out.  Hey, it's 6am and I'm the only person awake in the house.  I'm allowed to try out my jazz voice (quietly, of course).

If you were sitting here with me, drinking tea, you would notice that I'm a new consumer of Splenda and soy milk.  In several ways, it's a reminder for me that all us daughters do become our mothers.  Now I actually understand why my mother bought this crap... I mean, bought these delicious alternatives.  Sugar intolerance sucks, but it's better than diabetes, so I count my blessings.

If you were joining me for tea, we would probably talk about the baby growing inside me, because that topic is sheerly unavoidable.  I would tell you about my scheduled doctor's appointment today, and my accompanying food diary, and how this child is a real mover and shaker.  You would ask me my due date, we would marvel at how close it is, we would wonder aloud how Caroline is going to do with the whole thing, and then we would move on to other topics.

If you were sitting here with me at my kitchen table, I would ask you about your day and your plans.  Large or small, a day's plans are important.  They're going to be what consume you for the next 14 hours, and that's a long time.  So I would ask you about that, and how you feel.

And then we would start our day and go our separate ways.  But it's nice to begin with morning tea.

Loaf o' Gold

Yesterday morning after breakfast, my daughter and I were lounging around, watching a couple episodes of Caillou.  In the last episode we watched, Caillou baked a cake with his mommy.

My daughter had watched this episode before, but this time, the cake really caught her attention.  I don't think I had even heard her say the word 'cake' before ('cookie,' yes, ALL the time... but never 'cake'), but here she was, running to the kitchen and searching through our pantry shelves, saying 'cake' over and over.

Before I continue with this story, here are a few important facts for reference:

1. You will rarely find me in the kitchen
2. I've never baked a cake without a pre-made boxed mix
3. My daughter has me securely wrapped around her pinky finger

Due to fact #3, I obviously had to bake a cake immediately, but that posed a problem with fact #2: we didn't have a boxed cake mix.  Keeping my composure, I turned to the one cookbook that has never failed me: my Betty Crocker cookbook from the 50's that my Mom gave me (who in turn had it given to her from her mother, who I lovingly call Nan).  Since I'm the third generation of women to use this cookbook, it has priceless notes and recommendations written in it that really make this cookbook the treasure that it is.

I turned to the Cakes section and started browsing for a cake that didn't require any ingredients we didn't have readily on hand.  I didn't want to mess with the layered, frosted cakes... I wasn't sure that my daughter would like a chocolate cake... I really wasn't sure what to try.

Then eureka! I saw one of Nan's unmistakable handwritten stars (written in bright pink ink, no less) next to a recipe, which always indicates that Nan really, really liked the recipe.  This was the only cake in the entire Cakes section that had one of Nan's pink stars.  Loaf o' Gold.

It was perfect.  Made in a bread pan, it was an easy, very straightforward pound cake.  Eggs, sugar, flour -- the usual stuff, and everything we had on hand.  My daughter and I rolled up our sleeves, put it all together, and stuck it in the oven for an hour.  As she ate her lunch, the cake was done, and both her and my husband had a couple slices for dessert.  They loved it, and I felt like a real mom, baking a cake with my daughter.

So to Nan, thank you for showing me the cake to make for my daughter, I know you saw us.  And to Mom, thank you for passing down this priceless cookbook.  I don't know what I'd do without it.

The exhilaration of the promise of Spring

A tale of irony.

Friday evening, I left the office to a very pleasant surprise: Mid-40-degree temperatures.  Now, I'm far from being a Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferer, but Spring is my favorite season solely due to the elation of seeing warmer weather arrive after a long, dismal Winter.  And that is what I experienced walking out of the office on Friday evening.

No.  No... I experienced so much more.

It's a huge understatement to say that this excitement -- this exhilaration -- is sheerly because of warmer temperatures.  There was so much Spring to experience on Friday:

• A cool (not cold!), fresh breeze that carried a delightful hint-of-rain smell
• Actually reveling in the breeze instead of pulling my coat hood down lower and bracing myself against the wind
• Soft, relaxing rain pinging on the windows
• Sun! Even if it was only occasionally peeking from behind the rain clouds

I wanted to somehow capture everything that all of my senses were experiencing during that short walk through the parking lot.  Take a picture and an audio recording and some futuristic media that can capture smells, and keep it forever, for those moments when I need that renewal.

But I couldn't, so I just walked slowly, soaking in every second of it and knowing more days like this are to come, because this was a promise of Spring.

The funny thing is, I started drafting this post on Friday night, but got tired and waited to finish it today.  Let me just say that it's a good thing March gives us these little nuggets occasionally, because this has been the, umm, "experience" all afternoon:

I'm grateful I had the memory of yesterday as I shouldered my way through the freezing cold today.

They don't make 'em like this anymore

I really miss the incredible music that Disney films used to bring.  I remember buying the soundtrack for almost every new Disney movie that came out, sometimes loving the music more than the movie itself.

They just don't make movies like that anymore.  (And yes, I feel old saying something like that.)

I do enjoy the Pixar movies.  The stories are always very heartwarming, and the visuals very stunning.  But I really, really miss music like this.