Blogrolling offers an easy way to have people add your blog to their blogroll. If you use blogrolling, you can me to your roll by using this:

Blogroll Me!

—-

A revelation: over the weekend we went to a show at a gallery/studio near us, and a guy who’s got some excellent credentials — he’s played with Ray Charles — was playing acoustic guitar in the corner. DH went with Olive to stand right next to him, and she was transfixed. She rocked and panted and flapped her arms and demanded to be closer to him. She was thrilled — which he certainly appreciated. He was the first person she’d ever watched play.

Then we went to our friends Kathy and John’s house for an impromptu dinner. We stayed far beyond Olive’s bedtime; about 8:30 she was melting down, getting ready to cry us out of there, when John, who is a jazz scholar and musician, sat down at the yamaha grand they have to play a song or two before we left. Olive lit up like a lamp. We just listened to a song or two, then we stood with her where she could watch his hands on the keyboard as he played about four more, which she would do for four or five minutes at a stretch with barely a glance away. She cooed and laughed and rocked and flapped and kicked and smiled — all the things that indicate strong Olive approval. She thrilled for all told about a half hour of this, and was cheerful until we left at nearly 9:30.

Combine this with the big leap she’s made with her secondhand little tykes piano/xylophone — now she can slap the keys fairly successfully, producing violent little notes, and will do it as long as you let her — and we may have a little music fiend on our hands.

—-

The power went out in the big storm. Usually, the reports exaggerate and I didn’t expect much snow. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to no heat and a foot or so. We lost a branch off of the Chinese maple — poor tree! — and the limbs (usually several feet from the ground) nearly bent to sidewalk with the weight of this wet, wet snow. We “evacuated” to my family’s house. This involved learning how to shut and drain (or drain and shut?) the water off to keep the pipes from freezing and figuring out secrets of the pilot light.

We were supposed to have brunch at our house so we took everything over to another person’s house and made it all there.

We could not do laundry, check email, turn on lights, vacuum or any other number of modern-day types of tasks. I loved it. Just what I needed.