The oaks along E 260th, carved out by the city so to not interfere with its precious resource: the telephone wire, hold some of the remaining snow the plow trucks had smacked their trunks with. And it is dirty. Tree after tree, tree lawn after tree lawn, trunk after trunk, a dirty patch of vertical snow. Just something I noticed and found funny.

This morning at Wal-Mart (Rachel and Lloyd went to a play day at his preschool for three hours of sweet semi-freedom) Dallas looked around a bit and asked me out of the blue if this was Wal-Mart, which tickled me. Then he cried a lot while I strolled down the toy aisles one last time for 2007, but was for the most part well-behaved and even more so when an elderly woman asked him what he was unhappy about. He listened to her while sucking his fingers and holding my hair. I bought him both boxes of Little Debbie's he said yes to ("you want this one or this one?" -"Yes.") because I never buy them (besides Star Crunch ... because they make low-fat ones and who could resist?) and Christmastime is totally about overdoing things and blaming Santa.

Rachel said Christmas is her favorite holiday. It's interesting how we as kids probably felt the same way but think pretty much the opposite now. And we're the ones who keep the tradition rolling. Oh well.

Disgruntled means ill-humored. I don't want to be either of those.

I have the folks to buy for. The part about figuring out what to get them I've conquered. Now I just have to drag my beat self to the mall once more and kiss a little more money goodbye.