Say your (much depended-upon) backspace key is getting slower and slower. So you search online, and learn that you can go into your Start Menu, then your Control Panel, then your Keyboard settings, and change the response on the keys to “fast.” And you do that (or anyway you leave it at “fast” when you see that it’s already there, and you also change the repeat delay to “fast.”) And it doesn’t help. And meanwhile, other keys are starting to be very sticky and slow to respond. It’s taking you ages to write a sentence, because the keys’ response is so slow that you don’t see your mistakes until you’re far past them, and then it takes forever to delete back to the mistakes and start again.

Obviously one solution would be to never make typing mistakes, but that’s not going to happen (because you’re me) and anyway even without the mistakes, those slow keys are making you want to scream and hit someone. Because typing freely is like life’s blood to you.

In that case, you might try changing the keyboard’s batteries.

PRESTO! Now you can make typos and delete them to your heart’s desire. Life is good again.

Me: “Hey kids–look, that vanity plate says ‘G-O-O-D-V-B-S’. Why do you think they wanted a license plate about Good Violent Blue Squirrels? I just don’t see what the big deal is about Good Violent Blue Squirrels.”

Isaac: “It’s ‘Goodvibes.’”

Mabel: “What? I can’t see it.”

Me: “It’s a license plate that says ‘G-O-O-D-V-B-S’, and they must mean Good Violent Blue Squirrels, but I don’t see what’s so good about that.”

Ike: “It’s ‘Goodvibes.’”

Mabel: “Or maybe it’s ‘Good Vicious Blue Squirrels.’”

Me: “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of that. That could be it. But what’s so good about vicious blue squirrels?”

Ike: “It’s ‘GOODVIBES’.”

Me: “Hmm. Maybe. I don’t know. There are just so many things it could mean.  Like, it could also be Voracious Blue Squirrels.” Pause. “You kids are so lucky to have a mom with such a great sense of humor.”

Ike:  Laughs. “Yeah.”

(Image borrowed from here)

Sue of “Navel Gazing at its Finest” has helped organize a great project to provide coats and other winter gear for refugee kids in Salt Lake City. Click this link for information, including some ideas for places to order really inexpensive (but cozy) coats.

(Sorry the picture doesn’t click over there; I don’t know how to make it do that.)

I’ve been thinking about sayings such as these:

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

“Grow where you’re planted.”

“Every cloud has a silver lining.”

“An optimist sees the glass as half-full.”

“Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

People will also tell us not to wish away our lives waiting for something better to come along, that we should find the good in everything, focus on the positive, not waste time worrying, and that we’ll look back someday and realize that these were the best years of our lives.

I’ve realized all of these concepts can be combined into one simple aphorism:

“Be happy while you’re miserable.”

[Note:  The above sentiment does not necessarily reflect the actual worldview of this writer.  Most days.]

We had some snow on Saturday morning.  Mabel named her snow girl “Pathetica.”  Tonight the kids wanted to sing “Once There Was a Snowman*,” which reminded me that as of yesterday afternoon, Pathetica was still in pretty good shape on our back porch, so we all had to see how she’d fared in today’s warmth.  She was still there, but living up to her name.

*Rose actually wanted to sing Once There Was a Snowman “backwards,” with the snowman defying all logic by starting out small and getting taller.  I don’t know where these kids of mine get their mischievous sense of humor.

I’m told that this snowball was once three times larger, but Isaac dropped the ball and it broke.

Mabel found the last two unharvested carrots in our garden, but decided they were unsuitable as Pathetica noses.  We had a pretty good carrot harvest this year; it saved us $2 in grocery bills.

Here’s a glimpse of your future:

Back when Dean and I were engaged and talking about how many kids we wanted, I would tell him that once we had a bunch of kids, I was going to bring them all to his work with snotty noses and sticky lollipop residue all over their faces and hands. This used to make him laugh. Nervously. Sadly, I never do take the kids to see him–in fact I hardly ever go up on campus at all, let alone with a carload of kids. I’m taking the kids to get H1N1 shots this afternoon, though, and the pediatrician’s office is near BYU–but Dean said he’s going to be attending a seminar this afternoon. (Do you think he was telling the truth?) Oh, well–I don’t think my doctor’s office gives out lollipops, anyway.  (But I could buy the kids all chocolate bars . . .)

If you feel sorry for your three-year-old when you discover that, having only ever been allowed to watch his sister use the computer, he’s never learned to use a mouse, don’t.  If you think it will take him a long time to learn to use a mouse once you give him the chance, don’t.  In no time at all, you’ll be trying to use the computer yourself to the constant accompaniment of a desperate preschooler crying, “I want to go on [Tele]tubbies.”

If you think your daughter will come down with bad croup the same morning after your husband leaves on a three-day business trip, you’re right.  If you think your husband will never fully understand your physical and emotional exhaustion after a few days of caring for her and the rest of the kids, and particularly after, on one of the days he was gone, a couple of minutes of hearing your daughter choke out “I can’t breathe, Mom–I really can’t breathe.  I’m scared,” while you try to decide whether to take her to the emergency room, you are right: he will never fully understand.  At least, he won’t understand unless you become a chemical engineer and leave him with the five kids for a few days while you go to a professional conference, having first arranged for at least one of the kids to get very sick.  (I haven’t tried this tactic.)  Mabel is doing great now, with only a little bit of a residual cough.  But Hazel now has a cough.  And I don’t really want to leave Dean alone with the kids (and I certainly don’t want to become a chemical engineer.)  I just never want him to travel without me ever, ever, ever again.  (I’m doomed for lots of disappointment in life.)

If you think your three-year-old will ever stop lamenting that you absent-mindedly removed the granola bar wrapper instead of letting him do it for himself, you’re right, but only if you fish the wrapper out of the trash, replace it on the granola bar, and let him pretend to cut it open himself.  Fortunately, three-year-old obsessiveness is a cloud with a silver lining:  if you ask him to clean up all the little shards of paper on the floor from an earlier cutting project of his, he will do an excellent and thorough job.

If you think your kids will put themselves down for their naps while you write a blog post, and that your baby will be happy left alone in her high chair after she runs out of Cheerios, you are wrong.

“Pirate Alyssa” is on the right, wielding her back-scratcher sword. On the left is “Pirate Key.”

Update:  If you’ve put the cute new top you bought for your baby on her, and it’s just not as cute as you thought it would be, and she seems not to like wearing it, you might want to check whether the matching panties that came with it aren’t still attached to the shirt’s underarms.

Now that I think about it, I think I actually did realize it was a boy pilgrim hat I was wearing in my banner last year–but I thought it was easier to use it than to try to put a white cap on my stick-figure drawing.  So the problem seems to be less with the hat-discernment part of my brain, and more with the remembering-things-so-I-don’t-sound-foolish-on-my-blog part of my brain.

So much for not sounding foolish on my blog.  (And I had come so close . . . )