Hm. Any StL/KC peeps around? I'm supposed to be driving across IL and MO tomorrow and my mother called to tell me it's supposed to be icy all across I-70. The weather reports I've seen are less alarmist about it. What have you heard?

Non-quotey meara, for lo, I am cut-n-pasteless.
 
Bwah! I love the "tolerant" comment. That`s awesome.
 
We totally fed our Mormons. They were skinny! And tired from all the walking! Even when we were less rural, we were still pretty rural.
 
Yay Kat on Gracie school and the Dynavox stuff. Less yay on the OT. Those things you mention are definitely things a competent OT could work on. What`s the status with the trache?

Jesse or ita, prod me tomorrow to mention the Good Things Happened tumblr on Twitter. I want to promote it, I just want to make sure I do that when there will be more people online than now.

Happy belated birthday, Typo Boy!

Well, I managed to get out to the grocery store and just bought what was on my list, except I did pick up a pack of hangers that were prominently displayed on an endcap. You can't have too many hangers! I did get a small 8 inch frying pan, to accommodate my smaller serving size needs by the end of the month (I don't need my bigass frying pan for one or two scrambled egss).

I finally started my pureed foods today. Breakfast was my usual Greek yogurt (finished off the container), but a very late lunch was a half cup of mashed banana, and then I made up that Bear Creek chili and pureed about a third of it for the next few days worth of lunch and dinners. Very tasty, indeed!

Next week, I'll be able to start moving onto very soft foods, including egg salad, my favorite! Looking forward to that.

ETA: Speaking of hangers, I'm going to have to look through my closet for my next size smaller pants, which I'm sure I still have somewhere. My current pants are constantly slipping off my butt when I stand up, and it's becoming annoying!

YAY Kathy! I am so excited to hear about your progress!

Congrats, Kathy! I hope the recovery from the surgery is going well as could possibly be.

Here's another cold clime thing I have been ignorant of because I've lived my entire life in coastal CA - Neil Gaiman was just mentioning on Twitter that there are loud crack sounds that frighten his dogs - its the sap in trees freezing as it expands and thus cracking the branches.

Neil Gaiman was just mentioning on Twitter that there are loud crack sounds that frighten his dogs - its the sap in trees freezing as it expands and thus cracking the branches.

Oh, that's a staple of Jim Kjellgaard's books, and many others I presume. But that's where I became acquainted with the phenomenon. Cold icy nights out on the mountains and the sudden, gunshot crack of a tree exploding.

Cold icy nights out on the mountains and the sudden, gunshot crack of a tree exploding.

That's cool. Would scare the piss outta me, though.

Grace continues to be awesome. That OT, not so much. How do some people make it through so much training and testing and still remain clueless incompetent assholes?

Kathy, it's great to hear your success stories! Including the pants-falling-off-butt success stories.

That is an awesome reason to have to buy new clothes, Kathy.

Aurelia, it looks like, yes, IL and around StL are icy and rainy, but mostly west of StL, it is ok.