Return to the land of the communicating

Thank God for sweet old Tom, the Time Warner Cable guy! We've had no internet and telephone access for the past couple of days for some mysterious reason, so I've been incommunicado for what feels like way too long. I had NO IDEA how much of an internet addiction I had til it wasn't an option. I mean, what's a stay-at-home mama to do during baby naptime anyway? (And if you say, "Clean the house," I'll slap you. Although, if you'll recall we hired a cleaning service to come in to professionally clean all the barf germs that apparently I missed after we were all sick. They're gone, y'all! The ranch is sparkly clean now, and it was worth every one of the many, many pennies we spent.)

With all the extra time not taken up by the lure of blogs, both mine and others, I have done many old-fashioned things lately. These include:

• becoming semi-addicted once again to lattes made by baristas at friendly, neighborhood coffeeshops. I'm usually a 2-cups-of-tea kind of girl, but not lately.
• reading most of "The Endurance," a book of Ernest Shackleton's harrowing Antarctic expedition in 1914-1916. It's been truly riveting, especially because the photos from the trip were published in this book, too, and there are many portraits of capable, fit men with sardonic eyes. Ooh la la!
• eating my way through most of a 2-pound box of See's chocolates, one of Husband's traditional Christmas gifts to me. Hey, I'm nursing so I NEED those calories! Also, the whole stomach virus thing deprived me of my usual 5 extra holiday pounds, so I'm trying again.
• doing many crafts with Sister after school. We've glued small backgrounds and tiny, sparkly objects into bottlecaps, put together melty bead creatures, and finally gotten around to that Make-Your-Own-Egyptian-Mummy Kit she's had since last Christmas (complete with jars of plastic viscera topped with unpronouncably-named gods' heads!)
• cleaned out our large hall closet secretly and gotten rid of such priceless objects as an old corded phone, 2 Easter baskets plus many plastic Easter eggs, an un-stylish battery-operated clock, and a princess movie projector book thing-y. Needless to say, I didn't consult either Sister or Husband before removing these objects to their new thrift shop home. Those 2 are the biggest pack rats ever, I swear.

But I've had my fill of time consuming projects and am very pleased to have now returned to the world of time-draining blog-keeping! Can't wait to get caught up on everyone else's blogs tomorrow!