While I was Sleeping...uh, I Mean Busy

Although I've been sleeping in the blogsphere, I've been wide awake in the real world....not that the blogsphere isn't part of the real world, but well, you know what I mean. I can hardly believe it's been five days since I last posted, and I have no real excuse other than general busyness and perhaps a lack of inspiration.

While I was not here, I was maintaining the homefront, preparing for some monumentous events like Little Chic's very first 4th grade orchestra (she plays viola) and chorus concert (she had a vocal solo). I realize the picture of Little Chic's blue lap is not the most interesting, but by posting the only picture I captured of her orchestra performance I'm proving the point that I am not an adequate multitasker when it comes to taking pictures at the same time I'm trying to use the camcorder. Frankly, what I'm really trying to prove is that Hero Guy was running late and I was manning all the electronics singlehandedly for a few minutes.

The second notable event this week was the annual Snowflake Ball at Little Chic's school. It is a father/daughter dance which she takes as seriously as if it were the prom. We go through all the usual fretting about the dress, arguing about whether or not dad really needs a boutonnière that matches the corsage and mulling over which restaurant will have the most patrons to oooh and aaaah over her get-up when they go out to dinner. It's actually quite fun to see her excited about spending the night with her dad and feeling like a big deal.

Other than those two things, I also spent Tuesday awake until 4am listening to HyperDog fuss and fume over a phantom mouse (if it's not phantom, it's somewhere in the wall or ceiling, although we never heard it). After realizing that ignoring her, yelling at her and throwing slippers at her were not going to shush her, we blasted the ocean waves on our sound machine and shut her outside the bedroom door. Each night since, she has prowled around the bedroom, scooched behind every bedside table and under the bed and has come up with nothing. I'm still able to convince myself it's a phantom at this point although our track record is dim. (It's also dim that I have more than one blog entry containing mice in my house and I didn't even blog every incidence of grossness. There are disadvantages to living in the country in sub-freezing weather - namely field mice.)

The last tidbit I'll leave you with is that when I went out to dinner at teeny tiny Thai restaurant on Friday night, I had my first run in with a bidet. If you're not familiar with this particular gem, it's basically an automatic car wash for your rear. It features a nice warm shower and automatic blow dry when you've completed your mission and can come as quite a surprise if you're not expecting it.

So with that, I hope I've made up for lost time and have given you another word to add to your vocabulary list. As Little Chic says, "TTFN" (Ta-Ta for now!)