My learning for the day was that the WeatherBug software I use to alert me to hurricanes, pestilence and other acts of nature is actually a front for spyware that is, even at this moment, sucking every last scrap of information off my hard drive and sending it to every spam-monger on the planet. I am, however, so dependent on having up-to-the-nanosecond weather information that I cannot imagine trashing my beloved WeatherBug (because my weather-junkie-ness ranks only slightly behind my need for Ice Wine and an occasional fix of Microsoft Streets and Trips). This is how they do it – they draw you in, offer you a tiny taste of weather nirvana and then wrap you up like a fly in a spiderweb.

Here is how my morning started (and an example of yesterday’s entry title):
6:30 Get out of bed. Step on dog. Realize dog has been sleeping on my pillow that I apparently flung out of bed sometime during the night.
6:31 Wake younger daughter by turning on light in her room (to which she reacts in typically vampire-like fashion). Get acknowledgement that she is awake in the form of a grunt.
6:32 – 7:00 Feed animals. Put dog out where she licks the frozen water in her outside water bowl (I am in fear that she will get her tongue stuck). Put away clean dishes. Make daughter cup of tea. Perform general tidy-up of kitchen and family room. Realize that I am short one daughter who is usually downstairs by 6:50.
7:01 Go to daughter’s room (really the guest room since her room is too messy to sleep in) and startle her awake again.
7:15 Daughter appears downstairs complaining that the cleaning people have moved stuff in her bathroom which she can no longer find. Takes one sip of tea and pronounces it undrinkable. Snarls at me for some other unknown reason.
7:18 Get in car to drive daughter to bus stop (one house away – yes, she is immensely spoiled which explains much of this behavior).
7:19 At bus stop. Daughter realizes she has no note to ride friend’s bus home in the afternoon. Cannot locate pen, paper, pencil, papyrus, anything on which to write note. Blames me for not having stationery and writing implements in car (she’s going to *school* for god’s sake and does not have a single pencil with her!). Suggest writing note in blood on her science book.
7:20 Daughter screams invectives at me while exiting car, slams door and has started another delightful day.

Teenagers. Can’t live with them. Can’t ship them to a convent anymore.