Whew, this place has been a whirlwind lately! Last weekend, our friend Mark stopped by during his holiday pilgrimage from Maryland (where he grew up) back to Austin (where he is in his last year of law school). He was here for about 3 days, telling us all about living in Texas and his recent semester abroad in Bulgaria. It was so good to see him. Monday, right after he left for Texas, the phone rang. It was our friend Linda who was about to make her holiday pilgrimage from Michigan back to Baton Rouge, where she is getting her PhD in performance studies. She was going to be coming through the next day and hoped to stop in for a couple of days. She and I had 2 amazing days of adult conversation, drinking beer and chatting about the good (and not so good) old days. The timing was amazing. As she got in her car and drove away, and I started packing Henry up to go to playgroup, I felt like I had just cleaned out my closet and was looking at all of the things I had chosen to keep, neatly stacked up on shelves and nestled in clearly labeled boxes. Lin is one of those rare friends who it is possible to have a seamless relationship with, even after losing touch for months and months. Our lives are nothing alike-she being single and loose on the streets of Baton Rouge, deep in the world of academia, and me tied so closely to my little family, deciding what will rot my brain less: The Wiggles or The Doodlebops. But somehow, we are in a very similar place. It was wonderful and strange, how little we recognized our time apart. I will miss her more now that I have been reminded what I am missing.

We watched an amazing movie the other night called Mysterious Skin. As much as I liked it, I wouldn't recommend seeing it to anyone. It was beautiful and well acted, but it was so disturbingly effective that it has kept me up two nights in a row. Who knew the kid from Third Rock from the Sun had those kind of acting chops? Man. It leveled me.

Kyle took the bean for a hike in the Pisgah National Forest this morning and they saw a BEAR! Scary? Yes. I thought they were supposed to be sleeping this time of year, but Adrienne said that sonce the climate is so mild here they come out and forage around every once in a while. Yikes!

Last night at Target I got some "potty prizes" for Henry, to encourage him to pee in the potty. Yeah. He didn't understand why I would show him cool puffy stickers and not give them to him. I told him he had to go sit on the potty first, so he went in, sat on the potty for 2.5 seconds, got up and started demanding his stickers. I guess we will have to be more clear about what potty behavior actually gets stickers and things. He is not a fan of the potty and I don't really know how the hell I am supposed to time the sitting on the potty thing so that there is an actual chance of him peeing in it. Next week I think we are going to have a couple of "running around nekkid" days so he can see what happens when he pees. We'll see. I am not looking forward to this foray into potty training.

Also? I hate football.