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Steve and I both started the day not feeling all that well, so we've mostly taken it easy today.  I already got the phone call that Kaylee's school is at minimum on a two-hour delay, and may be cancelled outright again.  There are power outages around, some of her friends are without power right now, we have more "frigid" sub-zero temps and snow and wind headed our way, and winter continues.  I feel like I'm in Wisconsin in the 80s or something. 

I had some fresh ingredients to use up, so I made one of the last meals I'd bought stuff for.  It was fine, it tasted fine, but it was a whole lot of work, over an hour to fix it.  It wasn't THAT good, and I could have used boxes of stuff and gotten in done in a third of the time.  I finely chopped an onion. And celery.  And garlic.  And fresh parsley.  And portabellas.  Mmmhmm.  Like I said, it was fine, it was good, but not worth the effort.  Two wins, one draw.

We broke out Kaylee's lemon and blueberry birthday cake tonight.  We didn't want to wait so long that it went stale, and there's no chance of anyone else being around for the next several days thanks to the weather, so we just did it ourselves and enjoyed.  The candle was one that "sparked", and she wouldn't stand next to it to let me get a picture.  I finally got one and her eyes were closed.  Bugger.  The cake was really good, too.  The frosting was very rich, you didn't want all of it, but the blueberries on top were fresh and plump and together with the lemon cake it was all really good.  We give it three thumbs up.

Today I read a book called "The Book Thief".  It was a differently written and interesting take on life and death in Germany during WWII.  It was written from the perspective of Death, the collector of souls, trying to understand humans, and being captured by the unfolding of one human story line amongst all the stories--a little girl it called "the book thief".  The author uses words and phrases in ways that most people don't. Using tastes to describe sounds, using smells to describe sights.  Using phrases you just wouldn't normally put together.  It's hard to describe.  Like "I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair and surprise.  They have punctured hearts.  They have beaten lungs." Or  "It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater."  and "The plane was still coughing, smoke leaking from both its lungs.  Three deep gashes were made in the earth when it crashed, its wings sawn-off arms.  No more flapping for this metallic little bird."  Or "The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring.  In some places, it was burned, with black crumbs streaked across the redness."  Anyway, interesting writing style that seems like it would be too much, but somehow isn't, to me anyway.  The story is of a little girl whose mother gives her up to another family elsewhere to save her during Nazi occupation, and just the lives of the families and how things were interlinked over the years. It's hard to describe.  The little girl has a hard life, and death watches her over the years as it helps so many people she cares about.  It tells the story of what it might like to be German during the war.  The ones who tried to help the Jews, the ones who kept quiet to save their families, the ones who went full bore into it, everyone just trying to survive.  Like I said, interesting read...left a bit of a mark.

Here are Kaylee's birthday cake photos, minus the one head on with her eyes closed.  ;)