Is Antarctica Colder than the North Pole?

I'm in a good mood. I looked out the window this morning, and for the first day in at least a week, the thermometer read 10 degrees ABOVE zero, instead of 10 degrees BELOW.

I heard on the radio yesterday something about a woman crossing the Antarctic on skis. She travelled completely solo across the entire continent. In 59 days, I think. Maybe it wasn't the entire continent, just a portion. The radio mentioned that she skiied around crevasses, over mountains, and across the Ice Shelf. (I realize that in this day of Google I have no excuse for posting a vague recollection of something that I "heard" about . . . with a few clicks of the keyboard, I could bring you the exact details along with several links to original sources. Let's just pretend that it's 1982 and computers are still huge units stored in underground rooms that require special government codes to access.)

I thought to myself, there really are only two types of people in this world. One type likes to ski across Antarctica. The other type likes to sit in front of her fireplace, sipping hot chocolate topped with those special peppermint marshmallows that her mother sent, refusing to Google answers to her many questions, such as, Isn't Antarctica the largest of the seven continents? Is Antarctica an actual land mass or just a big chunk of ice? Like, if the globe warmed, I mean REALLY warmed up, would most of Antarctica just melt away and be left as a tiny little island? Pfft. Anyone could ski across that.






Dinner last night: chicken egg rolls, pork egg rolls, rice

Blessings

I don't know about you, but I need time and distance before I can write about traumatic events that have occurred in my life. My eldest daughter is 13 years old, and still, I'm not yet ready to write her birth story. The first tenuous month of her life was the most stressful . . . most spiritual . . . most profound time . . . (see? I'm not able to express myself on this subject.) I wish I were talking about the miracle of birth and the anxieties of parenthood that every new mother goes through, but my first baby's arrival into this world involved a long and winding walk through the valley of the shadow of death. She was born full-term, but a series of complications quickly caused her health to spiral out-of-control.

She was pumped full of several medications that we were warned would most likely cause serious side effects. Should she survive, we were told to expect hearing loss and stunted growth. Shortly after she turned 4 years old, I was convinced that she was partially deaf. In a panic, I made an appointment for a full range of testing. Turns out, she suffers only from "selective hearing loss." She heard me just fine when I called—she just chose to ignore me. The disorder persists to this day. The louder I yell, the worse her hearing gets.

I've had to make peace with the fact that due to her scary start in life, my eldest daughter's height potential has been negatively affected. I have been accused of pride regarding my own height. When my back isn't out, I stand 5'10. I remember reading several years ago that the average height for American women is 5'5, so I was relieved to see that, while my daughter would never be tall like me or her younger sisters (all three who sit among the 90th percentile on height charts), she had reached the 5'5 mark by her 12th birthday. Except she didn't stop growing. She's up to 5'7 now, and one of the tallest girls on her junior high volleyball team.

She can pretend all she wants that she doesn't hear me,

but I still call her Shorty.

Dinner last night: pecan-encrusted chicken, tortellini

Exactly one year ago:

Moose Fix

Exactly two years ago:

Alaskan Palette

Exactly three years ago:

The Legend of Gray Tooth McGee

That's Affirmatory

Whenever I'm out and about with my youngest daughters, people ask, "Are they twins?" From now on, I think I'll just whip out my cell phone and show them this picture that I snapped this morning.

Two little peas-in-a-pod sitting at the breakfast table.

Dinner last night: grilled chicken breasts, risotto, steamed carrots

Exactly one year ago:

Snuggle Bunnies