Older yes, wiser ~ don't count on it

Yesterday was my *gulp* 47th birthday. I’m not at all sure how I managed to get this old without getting wiser.
I celebrated my birthday by taking myself to a stylist and getting a haircut. Recently I’ve been wearing my extra-fine hair in a simple layered bob. But yesterday I went a little crazy and had the stylist cut in layers ~ a la Heidi Swapp, for my scrapbooking friends. It’s pretty shaggy looking, but now it’s shaggy on purpose instead of by accident. Yeah, pillow hair is not chic!
I also went Christmas shopping, which is fairly traditional for me, a December baby. When I came home I found a 12 pack of diet cherry Pepsi in my door, left by a Ya~Ya scraper friend.
David brought home a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a gift card from his boss to Applebee’s, so we went out for garlic steak and shrimp. Then we came home and watched Cindy being voted off “Survivor,” which didn’t surprise me since she chose to keep the car instead of giving cars to everyone else on the island.
A gift from my Wyoming sister, and my mother and an e-card from my brother added to the delight of the day.
Because of my December birthday, I have come to expect low-key celebrations. But I have had a fairly good week. On Wednesday the Ya-Ya Scrappers had breakfast together. We gathered in our pajamas and ate fruit, a breakfast casserole and sipped hot chocolate. We had drawn names for gifting and I was given the Provo Craft Christmas Slab. Yeah! I have a lot of places I can use it. Alas, I could have used it three weeks ago for the Provo Craft Design Team competition, but realistically; I didn’t have much of a chance snagging the plum job against all the talented competition, anyway.
Today I have a luncheon planned with some ladies from my church. Two of them are part of my Ya-Ya Scrappers group, so I get to visit with them again today. Another church party is planned tonight, and my work has a party planned for Monday night, so I’m getting to be quite the social butterfly this week.
The downside of this week has been the weather. It’s been bitter cold. Now I realize cold is relative. We are staying below freezing, in Wyoming, my mother; sister and brother are trying to keep warm in temperatures recorded at -30 degrees. I’ve experienced that kind of cold before, and it is literally mind numbing. The snow squeaks when you walk on it and it is too cold to be slippery. Mechanical equipment, like cars and furnaces, start to break down.
I remember a Christmas when I was about 19 years old and we had a similar cold snap. My sister’s children were just babies. The power went out, they didn’t have a fireplace, and they couldn’t get their car started. She just tucked her babies in bed until her husband and my father could rescue them and bring them to my parents’ home where we had a fireplace to keep everyone warm.
As a result of this experience, when my family moved back to cold country, I looked for a house with a fireplace in it so we would not end up similarly endangered should we experience a cold snap and power outage. Hey, what do you know, I am getting wiser as I get older.


But the weather has offered some interesting photo opportunities. I’ve been drawn to the patterns of reflections and shadows lately. This week’s photo of the week challenge with my on-line scrapper friends has been “reflections.” I kind of failed at this attempt, but I did get some good shadows, so I’m going to use that photo instead.