There are times when I don't get the dishes put away immediately. In fact, there are times when the dishes from a particular meal, snack, or cooking episode don't get put into the dishwasher for a full day. These are usually times when there is a lot going on, when I've had to leave the house right after eating and don't come back until bedtime, when the kids have been bouncing off the walls and I haven't had the time to put the dishes away, things like that.

Things are finally started to bud and bloom around here a little bit. I was beginning to wonder if we were going to get to June and still look like it was the dead of winter. It still looks dead, but up close you can see the trees and bushes starting to grow new leaves. It's taken so long to get to this point, I'm interested now to see just how suffocating it will be when it all comes out.

We certainly haven't had any spring storms yet to speak of. Wimpy little things, up here. It tends to just lightly rain...all day long...all week long.

I miss home.

Tuesday night has become movie night thanks to the special usually offered by the theater. Tonight, we decided to have dinner, too, and visited the Texas Roadhouse next door. I walked in, and while there was an American flag on the wall, no Lone Star was visible from the entrance. After being seated, the waiter came to take our drink orders. No Dr. Pepper. I checked the beer menu a while later, and no Shiner, either. I look up, and finally see two Lone Stars on the wall over the bar. In between them is a Spartans flag.

Liam started babbling Thursday, babababa and stuff. He's been making a few noises like that all week, but Thursday he really took off. He'll carry on a whole conversation and loves it when we babble back to him. He'll do it while he's eating, too. He doesn't eat his food, he talks to it until it runs down the back of his throat in frustration.

Tuesday morning, I had a gynecologist appointment. When I left, I picked up Brian at work and showed him a positive pregnancy test. And he believed me! I let him off the hook after a few minutes, though. My new gynecologist is cool. He got somebody in his office who was pregnant to pee on the test for me. Brian says that was mean and rude and all sorts of other nasty things. I think that mean would have been waiting until that evening to tell him, "April Fool's!"

Yesterday was going really well, until about one o'clock. That's when I decided to brush my hair. I was about halfway through when Liam decided to roll over and smack the back of his head on the edge of one of the coffee table legs. I picked him up, but he wouldn't be consoled, so I wound up letting him nurse to calm him down. While I was doing that, both Tamara and Caitlin decided to go potty. When I finally got up there, they were apparently taking turns sitting on the toilet and wiping. There was a huge mass of toilet paper in the toilet, and when I tried to flush, it overflowed.

Had a bit of a scare earlier this week. The kids were watching the Wiggles on the Disney channel, and I was in the bathroom, when suddenly I heard that sound they use for the Emergency Broadcast/Civil Defense system. Talk about a heart attack! I have never before heard that sound unless it was on the radar channel back home (for weather alerts) or it was immediately followed by, "This is a test..." They didn't say it was a test. I rushed to finish and raced downstairs to find...nothing. Not a blessed thing.

Ever get tired of those automatic flushing toilets? You know, the ones that are showing up in all the expensive places, airports and movie theatres and casinos, that are supposed to sense when you're finished and flush the toilet for you?

I get so incredibly out of joint when I'm off schedule. Yesterday really wasn't a bad day. In fact, it was a pretty good day. But just the fact that I was off my usual schedule had me spaced and completely disconnected all day long. It's like I can't function without my schedule; my brain doesn't know what to do or focus on next.

Yesterday I took the kids to Caesarland, the Little Caesar's version of Chuck E. Cheese. They have one TV in the whole building, visible from some of the tables up by the cash register. It's showing the war, complete with bombings and fires and everything.

Later last night, Brian and I went to a night club. There were basketball games on, and the DJ occasionally made war references, but there was no war coverage visible.

Let me get this straight. We're covering the war for the little kids, but not for the grown-ups?