Happy birthday, Kevin.

Thank you, @LamarOKC.

Moments before she devoured the Oklahoma State Capitol.

VOTE HERE!

I put off posting this because, well, I never know what to say about it. And this year I was just floored at the nominations I received. That’s right. Plural. In years past (I’ve lost count now. Two, three?) I was nominated for the Best Writing award, which, to be honest, meant the most to me because it’s my passion. This blog is here for a reason. I’d say less for wanton exhibitionism than for my need to get things out. Kinda like what Miss Kim was talking about yesterday. I’ve been a writer (a title I learned that I could happily claim during one of my writing classes at OU) since I learned how to make the shapes of letters right before kindergarten, but I have always been an imaginer. And there is something about having the ability to imagine all kinds of scenarios that I believe is a mark of destiny. You will create. (Write, draw, paint, sculpt, dance, compose, etc.) I can’t paint, draw, or sculpt. Reading music is like math to me which means I don’t do it at all. Singing and playing the piano by ear came pretty naturally, but I’m only mediocre, if that. I have the thighs of a person who should be an accomplished dancer (meaning SHA-BAM!), but I’ve never done anything outside of lots and lots of hours of ballroom dancing and a little lyrical back in the day.

And so, I write.

This year there is no writing nomination for me and I’m cool with that. There are some people with incredible talent up for the award this year. Who I’ll be voting for, well, that’ll be a secret until it’s all over. In a minute I’ll highlight some of my favorites (and try not to leave anyone out!).

First, I want to tell you what I was nominated for this year.

Best Family Blog – I like the idea that a blog written by the female half of a newlywed couple, who was single up until very recently, is nominated for this award. Because we are a family. We’re building a home together and starting out on what will be a long journey with one another (Lord providing one of us doesn’t die or something). I’m really glad I’m documenting this life-altering change.

Now, maybe people nominated me for this one because I talk about my family. A lot. I do, I know! But I love ‘em!

…or maybe it’s because I’m really really really SFW (that’s “safe for work,” Heather ). You may think that, but I’ve got a few cousins that are more conservative than me *gasp* and they’d tell you otherwise.

Most Humorous Blog – Ha. Haha. Really? Sometimes I try. I think of a lot of funny things throughout the day and forget to write them down and then forget them entirely. This blog would be so much better if someone would give me a pocket notepad or something. Maybe I should go buy myself a tiny Moleskine.

In an effort to funny this thing up, I promise to model every prom dress and bridesmaid dress I own if I win any of these awards. Like, full runway, people. You want that? Then vote. I might even sweeten the deal and wear a prom dress to a blogger meet-up. Have you seen how good you get treated when you show up some place in formal wear? Well, I guess it’s sort of a toss-up. You’re either out for some special event or downright crazy. You never know what folks are going to assume. I’ve went through most of my childhood pretending everything was a special event and that I was the guest of honor and some may say that is crazy. I blog, you decide!

Best Political Blog (Conservative) - I don’t know about best, but conservative? Mmhmm. One thing that has become a pastime of mine is finding people who would otherwise like me, but when they find out my political affiliation they automatically assume that I’m ignorant and backwards. How tolerant of them!

Best Veteran Blogger (5+Years) - It’s true. I’ve been doing this for a really long time. If you want to get technical, I have had some kind of journal presence online since 1999. Almost my entire high school and college experience has been documented. Sometime I’ll go back and post my angsty, 15-year-old ramblings.

And (wow)…

Best Overall Blog - In the words of my husband, “That’s like ‘Best Picture’, right?” I told him it was, but then explained that I’m like your random independent documentary with conservative overtones that gets nominated up against sweeping epics with lots of dinner parties featuring spectacular shots of food (The Pioneer Woman) and period drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis, dressed the way men always should be–in top hat and tails (The Art of Manliness). I don’t hold out a lot of hope for this award, but I am humbled that enough of you would nominate me for it to land me on the ballot.

These awards make me question what keeps me blogging every year. Not in a “why don’t I just quit this” kind of way. But, I mean, it makes me realize why I do. I was blogging about Oklahoma long before I’d met anyone else who was. These awards have provided a wonderful way for us to get connected with other blogs we may have never heard about otherwise. I look forward to them each year with the hope that I’ll find another gem that pulls me in to read everyday.

Thank you all so much for nominating. I have been so blessed and encouraged by your sweet compliments and hope that you find the same blessing and encouragement here from time to time (when I’m not getting snarky [The Newest Innovation in Stool Softeners] or documenting a desperate addiction to tacos [When we get behind closed doors...])

The deadline to vote is MIDNIGHT this Sunday, February 14. Oklahoma bloggers, take a minute to show some love and cast a vote for your favorites!

Later, I will be posting a tribute to my favorite nominees. Stay tuned!

When my youngest cousin was little, she would run through my great-grandmother’s house saying, “Nannie, morningtime! It’s Tuesday and you’re in Ternell!” The last bit was because at this point our dear Nannie was slipping and about every 15 minutes she would ask where she was, what day of the week it was, and if she could please have her purse. And “Ternell” was my little cousin’s way of pronouncing Pernell, the town that I grew up in.

Coffee. Have to make the coffee.

I think this thought at least 10 times before I get up out of my spot on the couch and do it. The morning is my favorite time of day. It’s when I have my quiet time and all in the house is still. I try my best to make as little noise as possible, so as not to wake the husband or the dog. No matter what though, even when she’s in the garage, puppy knows as soon as I turn on a lamp in the living room. I hear her yawn and shake, jingling her collar.

Coffee.

It is calm. I prefer it when the house is clean, but even when it’s a wreck this is the time of day when I can just be. This comes from a girl who never really had any use for mornings. I don’t know what changed me. Maybe it was 2 years ago when I worked an hour away from home and would have to get up as early as possible if I wanted any time to myself.

Morning. With a little rain, barely a sunrise. A house to be warm in. A soft place to sit and watch the day unfold. I am so thankful that I am learning to appreciate it early in my life. There is a time for sleep, but I must confess I prefer the waking.

Bet you thought I lost power yesterday when I stopped updating that blog post.

Wrong. I died of BOREDOM.

Snow is beautiful (it’s what we’re getting today) and it’s so much better than ice. But I am ready to throw in the towel on this winter business. I love cold weather. I love rain and thunderstorms. We’ve never reached a point where we had so much rain in Oklahoma that I have tired of it. I think I’d enjoy Seattle or London a lot.

This winter weather though? I’m tired of it. The whole thing might be different if I lived in a state that was equipped to take care of this kind of thing without any major hiccups. But the snow and ice are so rare that it doesn’t get handled very well. I know that the various groups in charge of taking care of things are working their hardest, but man oh man. I’m done. No chains to put on my tires. No back up source of heat if the power goes out. No place to get water if there’s a problem with a line (like there was this morning). First world problems, I know.

Unfortunately, this afternoon I made a deal with my husband that if he would watch William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, I would watch Dune. I should have realized whenever he laughed maniacally and said, “Yeah, I’ll definitely watch Romeo + Juliet if you’re going to watch Dune.”

We’re only 20 minutes in and the faint of heart need to be warned. (If any of my uber-squeamish cousins are reading this, stop NOW.) There is an alien in this movie whose mouth was clearly modeled after a cow’s girlie bits.

I’m going to collect quotable lines from this movie for your entertainment (and in italics, things that they should have said):

• “The itching becomes burning.”
• “There is a place terrifying to us…to women.”
• “Stains become a warning.”
• What up. I’m Sting. Look at me rockin’ this red hair and leather.
  
• “You are so beautiful, my baron. Your skin, love to me. Your diseases lovingly cared for, for all eternity.”
• Allow me to unplug your heart, bleed yourself all over me, and sexually assault you.
• Baby blue, was the color of her eyes…
  
  Baby Blue – George Strait
  
• “Spice. Pure, unrefined spice.”
• “I want to spit once on your head. Just some spittle in your face.”
• Let me now use a type of sign language that looks like a poor attempt at vogue-ing.
• “It’s yours to squeeze, as I promised! Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeeeeze!”
• They’ve just told a man he must milk a cat every day for the rest of his life if he wants to live. I’m so confused.
• Let us fight them with our pelvic thrusts!

And that, friends, is pretty much how today has been.

People are calling it “Snowpocalypse” but we need to fix this. FREEZING RAIN, folks. That’s ice. Ice is so much worse than snow. So much more apocalyptic. Here I am, blogging the biggest ice storm to hit Oklahoma in 2010, so what if we’re only 28 days in. They’re comparing it to 2007 and I’m going to have to check my archives to see how I fared in that one. I think I stayed under the covers for days.

So far this morning I have:

• Taken what may be my last shower for days.
• Had what may be my last cup of coffee.
• Shaved my legs (muy importante)
• Finished up a good deal of laundry.

And I’m about to finish all these dishes and fill the tub, just in case. In a situation like this the last thing you want to be without is water to flush the toilet with. Memories of gathering buckets full of snow in 2001 to empty in the bathtub, melt, and pour in the back of the tank just for a flush are NOT something I ever want to relive.

What I’ve learned in my few years on this earth is very simple: if you would like rain, ask me to paint over a weekend; snow – allow my husband and I to plan a trip back to the east coast to visit his family. You’ll get that in no small amount. Yes, go ahead and thank us. This ice storm thing is new, but not surprising. It probably has something to do with the fact that we had a trip planned this weekend and my having my annual with Dr. G (for gyno).

You see, I’ve never had an appointment with Dr. G when there wasn’t a glassy sheet of ice covering the entire parking lot. I’m a’tellin’ ya. Not to mention the fact I’m always waiting a while in the exam room because there’s something about a good ice storm that makes babies’ heads turn south and prepare for landing. A little bit like cows.

I’ll be updating as I can. When I feel like it. Until everything goes click and I suddenly have so much time to read.

Stay safe!

5:45AM - Thank the Lord, Norman has canceled school. No, I don’t want to make this up later, but I can’t imagine what kind of day it would have been if we’d had school.
6:39AM – Rain in Norman.
6:56AM - Placing lighters and candles where I will remember, in case this thing gets started before the sun is good and up. Who am I kidding. We won’t see the sun for days…
7:30AM – Mom and Dad called to invite us down to stay while our window for travel is still open. I declined, even though they do have a generator. You get in the country and you’re way more likely to go without water. I told Dad what I’d been doing to prepare. He said it sounds like we’ve got things under control. That’s a big deal.
7:34AM – Nosebleed. Weird. I never have nosebleeds. This would be a bad time for a brain aneurysm.
8:44AM – I joke about aneurysms too much.
9:25AM – I have a sick fascination with non-stop coverage of bad weather. Think I was born with it.
9:26AM - Also, husband still in bed.
9:50AM – Whew. Gary England has made it to the studio. We’ll all be okay
12:02PM - Chili on the stove. Still have power. The freezing rain is coming down really hard now.
2:32PM – It actually is treacherous here in Norman. Tree branches are trying so hard not to touch the ground. I’m watching the Jason Bourne movies and reading The Redneck Diva’s post (thanks for the shoutout, lady!) about the Icepocalypse. Told you it was a better name.
3:20PM – Mom called. Exciting stuff down there. A branch fell on a line and caught on fire so my dad shot it out of the tree. The day was saved.
3:24PM - Also, they are now without power. This has nothing to do with the last update.

Brr.

Okay folks. (I had a teacher in 8th grade who said that to get our attention. And then just got louder until we shut up. Folks. FOLKS.)

It’s freezing out there. Where I’m sitting in Norman it’s currently 18° F with a windchill of -1° F. Winds have picked up to almost 30 miles per hour here this morning.

Need I say, BRR again?

The puppy, who is usually an outside critter, has been spending the last few days indoors in the evening. Today, tomorrow, and likely Saturday she will be inside all day. I noticed her morning tinkle break took a whole lot less time today. That and now I’m thinking she may not be the early riser that I am. Brought the girl back in and she settled in on her pillow here in the living room to head back to dreamland. Lucky dog.

In the meantime, Kevin and I will be getting ready for the day and heading to work at school. Our district is one of the ones that has chosen not to close this morning, but there are many around the OKC metro area that called their closing yesterday. More have been added to that list this morning. I hear complaints from people raised in other areas of the country that they dealt with temperatures and conditions much lower when they were in school. You know, your typical, “I walked to school in 3′ of snow, uphill both ways!” Yeah, okay. This is Oklahoma. A lot of these kids live below the poverty line and don’t have pants to put on today before they walk to school. I think people might be surprised at the number of kids who wear shorts year-round. And maybe a hoodie. The fact is that not all these kids are prepared and I feel like the Oklahoma City and Edmond districts made a smart decision in closing for the cold temps. The students are the most important thing to consider in a situation like this, not whether mom and dad are going to be late to work because they have to drop them off somewhere or find a sitter. Kids who have a regular ride to school and their parents might not understand the necessity of closing, but if you were in the group that had no choice but to walk and had no parent or family member who cared to clothe you or make sure you had a safe way to get to school, I think you might get an idea.

Now I’m having coffee. And putting on a parka.

We were lucky that my dad called us that morning to wake us and say, “Come home” because if we hadn’t left when we did, I’m pretty sure that we would not have made it 50 miles south. We were out of bed at 7am and both showered and packed everything in the car ready to go by 8am. It took us a few minutes to put gas in the car and by the time we were on the road out of Norman there was already a mix of freezing rain falling.

As always, people were driving like nuts in Norman and ignoring the slick roads. By the time we made it to the interstate it looked like the road was pretty clear, but it only took driving south about 10 miles before we saw an accident happen and had to call the highway patrol. That one was pretty scary and to see the car I think you’d be surprised to know that the guy was out of his car and on his cellphone just about the time that we were.

My route to Mom and Dad’s house is usually a winding one. I take one of the earlier exits and spend most of my time on small state highways instead of the interstate. There was no question on Christmas Eve — we were taking the interstate as far as we could. Cars littered the shoulder until we reached Pauls Valley. South of there it was much clearer. I chalk that up to the fact that, no apologies, people from rural areas are generally better at handling this kind of weather in an automobile than their city mouse counterparts.

As we had expected, the state highways were already rather slick and turning on to Highway 76 south was quite a surprise: the highway that runs in front of my parents’ house was the most treacherous we had come to. Finally, a few miles and one tree in the road later, we were home.

The rest of the day I watched the snow accumulate while my husband played video games with my younger brothers. Younger as in 23 and 21, in case you don’t know. I documented the snowfall throughout the day.

Back yard:

Front yard:

I had never seen anything like it. And it wasn’t so much the snow that was remarkable, but the wind with the snow. Forty to fifty mile per hour winds blowing snow across the rolling hills of southern Oklahoma is really something to see.

Our traditional Christmas Eve did not happen because we couldn’t travel the 35 miles to Duncan, Oklahoma, where one set of my grandparents are, to celebrate with them. Their area of the state really got hit the hardest with a ton of sleet and freezing rain dumped on the main highway that runs through town, shutting down most travel. Since we couldn’t make it over there my parents made the call that we were going to do our Christmas that night with dinner followed by opening gifts. Now, in my 25 years of living, they have never let us open a gift on Christmas Eve, much less made us open all of them. This was a record-breaking Christmas in more ways than one.

For my mom, I took a family picture of our snowed in selves right before we opened our gifts.

It was really a great time getting to celebrate with my immediate family and our new addition, even if nothing so far this holiday season had seemed to go right.

For the first time in my life, I woke up to a glittering, white Christmas morning.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from under over 1′ of snow here in southern Oklahoma. It’s done falling, but Kevin and I are stuck here until…well, it’s looking like Saturday or Sunday at the earliest. On the upside, we still have running water and warmth. I don’t know about you, but I’m not asking for much more than that.

Now, off to enjoy my most favorite Christmas gift…my new Fiesta teapot.

Wanted to give a little update because I’ve had some people texting and what not, wondering if Kevin and I made it to our final destination…well, not that final destination. As you can tell by me typing this, we made it safely to my parents’ house in Pernell, Oklahoma, which is right square in the cross-hairs of the only blizzard I can remember seeing. It’s blowing like no other out there and we have huge drifts already. We’re snowed in and really don’t expect to get to leave for a few days, depending on how quickly this nasty business starts melting.

But I can deal with snow. It’s the ice that’s a killer. Please please please, though, if you are not bleeding from the ears or missing a limb, don’t leave your house. Someone got killed on a highway north of us after having a minor accident, walking for help, and being struck by another vehicle. We witnessed an accident on our way south and stopped to call the highway patrol for them, but even that is not always the best decision. Remember *55 for the state troopers in Oklahoma (I don’t know about other states). Keep yourself safe though. It’s good to help however you can, just stay safe.

Hope you all enjoy your Christmas Eve. I’m going to go enjoy a cup of hot cocoa and The Children’s Blizzard. Just seems appropriate.

Stay safe, my blizzardy friends!
Our Sunnyview
Redneck Diva
But I digress…
Maternal Maddness