Some days you're the windshield...

(Oops! I meant to post my Xmas card to everyone before I left for Denver. I scanned and loaded the image, but didn't get it linked. I'm a doing like that!)

I am officially in the holiday spirit. I had an early Xmas, or as I like to call it the Holly-Gays, in Denver. I got to spend time with Josh, which hadn't happened in months thanks to conflicting schedules. I got to give and receive a few presents. And I got to spend time with some amazing people.

There was the Christmas party at Mark and Alan's. Tres fab! A private tour of "Blossoms of Light," the light display at the Denver Botanical Gardens. Mark designs and puts it together each year as a contract, and I know just about all of his holiday elves who help wrap strand after strand of lights. This year the display was ranked #2 in the nation by AOL City Guide. There were cocktails once or twice (ha ha ha) and some new friends made. Stories, jokes, and incriminating evidence...we had it all. I left Denver feeling pretty darned good about things. Even the weather seemed to cooperate and give me a chance for one last lunch with the boys!

Then I got on I-25. Road conditions were NOT bad. Drivers, however, were dumb. 3 accidents between Denver and Fort Collins made for some VERY slow driving. I don't like doing 20 mph on the interstate, much less 3 mph. Finally north of FoCo, I decided to avoid the truck traffic I knew would be an issue between Cheyenne and Laramie. I buzzed across Owl Canyon Road without incident, though I did go a bit slower because of snow on the road. 287 wasn't bad either, and what little traffic existed was moving along at a very safe yet respectable 45-50 mph. Just before the Wyoming border, however, a semi driver was being...well, stupid.

Please note that driving too slow for conditions is ALSO dangerous. We'd been following him for 20 minutes, and traveled only 5 miles. Laramie was 25 miles away, and I knew that the vein in forehead would burst before I could stand another full hour of driving behind this twit. I'd already been on the road for 2.5 hours, after all. Traffic began to back up, and was up to a mile long before I was able to es-ca-pe (as Dorie told Nemo's dad).

After 3 hours of high stress driving, I returned home. I dropped off some holiday cheer to some of my friends and returned to the house at about 9pm. The visits had returned me to a calm state, and I felt no desire to scream. Then I went to bed at 10:30pm. And found the downstairs toilet was stuck running, and the reserve tank (clean water, thankfully) had overflowed. So I got to mop the bathroom clean for an hour before bed.

...and some days you're the bug.

I know the universe will not give me more than I can handle. Sometimes I just wish it didn't trust me so much! - Paraphrase from Mother Teresa