This is Mesa on her first hike. Three months old, and she almost has 15 words memorized. She knows her name, how to fetch, to stay, sit, shake, lay down, go to her bed, go potty, release, leave it, quiet, off, and she's aaaalmost potty trained.

Today was one of those days where the universe seemed to have a unified goal to conquer me, and it seemed that no matter how I tried to fight it, I was somehow loosing the battle.
Brent is in New York this weekend, and I am baby sitting my two youngest siblings in Utah. Upon waking up this morning, the third day of having my dreaded cold, it was made clear that the power in the house was out. So just two minutes into the day, it became my task to shower myself and two children, before school, in the dark, at 6 am. Then there was forgetting the right things in Matt's lunch, having the rare but roaring problem of a zit located directly in the middle of my face exploding in redness all over . . . having two teachers at the high school yell at me for being on my cell phone - and the humiliation of realizing I didn't look any older than a high school student . . . and, yes - I am not making this up - I got bit by an ant in Matt's third period. Six times, it bit me, all on my arm. If you haven't had an ant bite in quite some time, let me remind you what I had to remember. It hurts. Bloody searing pain up your arm. Damn ants.
Why is it just so much easier to surrender to a bad mood on days like this then to fight it and reign triumphant and gloriously smily?
There were a lot of good things that happened today too. I got a new student, I had an hour extra for lunch in between working with Matt . . . it's Friday . . . Mesa and I played in the yard for a half hour and it filled me with yellow to watch her summersault around with her favorite toy. . . Matt and Sarah are a dream to babysit - Matt always offers to set the table for dinner and Sarah is completely bounding with energy with how much she loves school . . . I paid the check to VW and they weren't mad that it was 3 days late. . . and believe it or not, I am starting to feel better with my cold.

So there you have it. A completely normal day full of positives and negatives. Okay, I feel better. I think I'll end it "a good day".