Technical Difficulties

Because it is this blog's birthday with its fancy schmancy 40,000 hits, I remembered that I always forget about checking my own hit counter. (With 4 readers it doesn't really seem a pressing task). So I checked it, and now I  suddenly feel like I am back in high school. After March 3, when I inexplicably had 50 -something hits, that little graph that goes up and down and up and down took a nosedive and crashed at the bottom of the chart. It says that I've had one hit since March 3. One? My mom and my mother in-law read my blog daily, and as for my other 2 readers...well, that just doesn't make any sense. Unless it does. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe I'm an April fool.

Speaking of high school and birthdays, we ventured out to last Saturday to meet Caleb's family for dinner. As we climbed out of the car in the drizzle and cold, a gaggle of girls, I'm gonna put them at about 11 years old collectively, giggled and shrieked and tottered on heels and shorts toward their parents' ride. Their faces were a miasma of day-glo pink and orange, their shorts disturbingly so for being eleven and outside in the cold. I hugged my baby girl closer, and I watched her watching them as they passed.  It reminded me of a story about my dad when he was a junior at Rhodes. He and his roommate had smuggled a cat into their dorm and decided it would be fun to introduce it the statue of the Lynx on campus. My dad held kitty aloft. This sweet, domesticated baby stared into the eyes of its fierce, tribal ancestor and promptly pissed itself. 

Always stay one, I whispered into her ear. She found my nose and smiled.