We're runnin' with the shadows of the night, so baby take my hand it'll be all right.

Coffee cart is here today! Once in a while a drug company will do a breakfast coffee cart instead of a doctor luncheon. I always am the first one in there and I almost always get an almond roca mocha. Mmmmm. Coffee is good food! The wires should be strung pretty tight today, since I had already made myself an extra strong super cup of French roast. I've already got the giggles and am spoof singing every song on our best of the 80's station. TT's either going to strangle me or join in. So far, she's laughing with.

Word(s) of the day: PROLIXITY

Lexie log: Saturday we drove into Portland to visit Gramma Betty. As we most often do, we all sat on the porch while Lexie played in the front yard. Aunt Patty comes over to play/visit, and eventually neighbor Jay comes over. He has the most outrageous, over-the-top, laugh. Lexie just loves it. She could be at any part of the yard when he would laugh, and she would stop what she was doing, turn around and laugh back at him, like some animal call. I used to live right behind Jay and Gramma Betty, we shared a gravel alley/drive. I can remember long, warm summer evenings punctuated by his laugh. When we showed up, the front yard had just been mowed. I let Heckle and Jeckle, the mallard ducks Gramma has, out of the back to explore the front yard. Lexie loves the ducks. The duck are wary of Lexie, but love to pick on Yancey (dog). Lexie is wary of Yancey (large dog), but Yancey loves to be affectionate to Lexie. Quite a circle. Eventually, the routine was for Lexie to herd the ducks through the back gate and wait until the braver one put his head down and charged her. Then Lexie would run back to the front steps screaming in mock terror mixed with delight, stop in front of us and say, "Scared'a me!". It was so funny and adorable to watch her with the ducks! After a while, she kicked around a mini soccer ball. She looks like a natural soccer player. Gramma went out to the sidewalk to sweep up the grass clippings, and Lexie was very interested in this new project. She tried to learn to use the big broom but wasn't so great with it. Instead, Gramma went inside and got her a mini sweeper with dust pan. Try as she might, she couldn't quite get the hang of the sweeper, so eventually she nixed that and just used her hands to put the grass in the dust pan. She figured out quick that this stuff was meant to go in a trash bag, so she now had a duty. At first, only 10% of what she put in the pan made it to the bag, and only50% of that actually went in the bag. After about half an hour though, she got to be pretty good. When the clippings ran out, Gramma pulled weeds and edging and kept up Lexie's supply of debri to transport. She had a good time. She was asleep within minutes of getting in the car to go home. -- Sunday we went to get movie and go to the store. Lexie and I went into Blockbuster while Daddy went over to Albertson's. I let Lexie walk on her own and she behave very well. She picked out Fox and Hound for herself, I picked Fern Gully for her, and we got Taxi and Training Day for Daddy and me. She was amazed with the oversized gumball machine at the counter. It had a clear base with a spiral ramp that the gumball rolls around and around to the dispenser slot. I couldn't resist, and not thinking clearly ahead, I put in a quarter. A giant yellow gumball noisily descended through the machine, and Lexie was thrilled. After I showed her how to retrieve it, I saw her nibble on the outside to see if it was edible but that was it as it was now our turn at the counter. Next thing I know, she has a mouth full of gooey, sticky gum and she is just chewing away blissfully. Her first gumball. She did smashingly. Only the slightest of sticky slobber when her saliva got to be too much for her. Other than that, she just chomped away on that thing for almost an hour. When she was done with it, she took it out to examine it, and then gave it to Daddy to dispose of. We walked across the parking lot to meet Daddy at a new store (to us anyway) called Just a Buck. A knock off of Dollar Tree. It was awesome. We found all kinds of neat stuff. I finally found the socks I have been searching for, and they were a dollar. Out of all the toys Lexie had to choose from, she choose a tablet of construction paper. She sure is amazing. We got her a pair of kid sized sun glasses, purple and blue. She actually let us put them on her and she wore them the whole way home. She was adorable, walking through the parking lot, smacking away at her gum with her starlet sun glasses on. Another funny thing...She cannot make it through a parking log without trying to get to each puddle. They are like magnets to her. One of us is holding tight to her hand as she is leaning all the way into each step, reaching as hard as she can pull to get to the closest puddle. It was incredible we made it both ways across the lot with her only making it to one puddle. She was like the lead dog of a sled team. I spent a good deal of time with her this weekend, and I loved it.

Today I'm grateful for Frank and Lexie, Dad and Mom, modern medicine, God, Just a Buck, wooden back scratchers, puddles, paper, Gramma and her prayers, the gym, super high thread count sheets (that hopefully some day we will own again), and ducks.