Today is my daughter’s birthday. She’s 15. I can’t believe it. And she spent her birthday in a Driver’s Education class, it’s a week-long class and she’ll have her Learner’s Permit by Friday. OMG! How did she get this old? It feels like she’ll be in college before I can catch my breath.

I remember when she was little. It felt like she would be little forever. Those first few years seemed endless. But then when she hit about age 5 it was as if she started to race through life, and the years started to tick by so fast that it made my head spin.

And now she’s 15. And the airlines will let her fly to visit me unaccompanied (yay) and she’ll be driving soon (scary) and I’m wondering where the years went. Wow, time flies.

She comes to visit next week, so we’ll have a little time together before she heads of for 10th grade in the Fall. But seriously, I’m pinching myself, I can’t believe she’s so OLD! OMG!

My 14 year old daughter has been visiting for the last two weeks. Since she’s been here she’s been busy writing short stories. She writes like someone far older…and far more twisted. One day I encouraged her to put up a blog with her stories on it and 20 minutes later she had published her first story.

You can check out her writing here at Auroraphobia’s Senseless Ranting. Auroraphobia is the “fear of the Northern Lights.” She actually has hemaphobia “fear of blood”, not auroraphobia, but you would never know it from her writing. [Her hemaphobia is attributable to seeing me almost bleed to death when she was about three, poor kid. I hope she gets over it.]

Aside from her visit I’ve been walking around with an unshakable sense that I’m doing something wrong, but don’t know what it is. I’ve felt this before, but never this clearly or for this long. The feeling comes and goes, but is altogether too prevalent for comfort.

One bright spot is that someone gave my husband two free plane tickets to Costa Rica. So we are going hiking in the rain forest sometime soon (I can’t wait to be in the mountains). Now we just need a pet sitter for 5 days. Anybody feel like house-sitting for our eight cats and one very cowed dog?

And finally, I have a game to share. It totally takes me back to my 9th grade Earth Sciences class wherein we spent the whole year calculating planetary orbits and making fun of our poor geeky brilliant teacher. I warn you though, it gets hard fast when you have to contend with more than one planet and orbiting moons. Makes you feel sorry for the sun. Play Orbitrunner. Hope you enjoy it.

I was just browsing around in Gary Denness’ Flickr Account (he’s a blogger who lives in Mexico City) and I was struck, once again, by the realization that being surrounded by good architecture is critical to the health of my soul.

This is all my parents’ fault. Of course. When I was little they bought a huge beautiful Victorian house (this followed living in a tent for a year). The house had soaring 15 foot ceilings and 6 bay windows, 2 of them in the living room. It had 8 bedrooms and 2 kitchens. It had 3 floors, a full basement, a barn, several outbuildings and so much more that any real estate agent would get writer’s cramp trying to take it all down.

But most of what that house had was classy architecture. It was beautiful inside and out. Every surface was nice, from the polished wooden floors to the fancy woodwork around the windows to the plush red carpeting on the wide staircases. There was room for everything and the spaces honored the people in them. It was a house that graced its occupants, it made you feel good. And everyone loved being in that house, it was always full of friends and family and neighbors and stray animals and I even remember a duck, once.

That house spoiled me. No house I’ve lived in since has felt so generous or so gracious. No house I’ve lived in since has made me feel honored like that. But when I see really beautiful buildings I get a taste of that back. And someday I’d like to buy another house that I really, really love. But this one can be a little smaller, that way maybe I can afford to, you know, paint it.

P.S. Check out Gary’s blog: The Mexile.

Recently I attended the first ever LatAm Bloggers Blowout. Sadly I was only able to attend the Friday night blowout, I had to miss the subsequent Saturday and Sunday blowouts.

The best part was meeting all those great bloggers. Us bloggers are a bunch of blabbermouth extroverts so there was no shortage good conversation. I wish I’d had more time to get to know everyone, but there’s always next time. Thanks again to Wayne for sacrificing his sanity to organize the event, he did a bang up job.

Attendees of the Blogger Blowout were given blog homework assignments which came from the book “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” by Margaret Mason.

My assignment:

How did you get those scars? The one on your thumb is from when you were three and you wondered whether scissors could cut skin. The one on your stomach is from your emergency appendectomy. Your boss figured you had to be in the hospital, because it was the only reason you’d ever be late to work without calling.

Your scars indicate what type of life you’ve lived. Whether you’re athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it.

My oldest scar is in the middle of one kneecap. The Momsicle tells me that I acquired it by jumping off a chair when I was about 18 months. I don’t remember exactly what she said and I don’t remember the event.

My next oldest scar is on my face, just by my eyebrow. It causes the nearby eyebrow hairs to poke out at weird angles. I was about 6 and I was trying to pull some piece of clothing out of my sister’s hands. I remember it being her clothing, or rather, I remember myself being guilty. She let go of the item and my own momentum sent me headlong into the corner of my bedpost. One inch over and I would have hit my eyeball on that bedpost.

Then I’ve got a scar just to the side of my other eye, it’s very small. This one was from a raging lunatic who had taken an ungodly amount of LSD and was drunk as well (terrible combination that is). He threw me down 3 flights of stairs. Before I passed out I remember hearing his mother yell “Call the cops before he kills her.” It apparently took 6 cops to get him into the patrol car, but I don’t remember that part. I’m lucky to remember anything at all.

I’ve also got a scar on one foot from a drop of hot oil that flew from a pan. That should have taught me not to cook barefoot…but it didn’t.

And my most recent scar is from a glass that one of my kitties broke. I brought the glass upstairs. When it was empty I placed it near the top of the stairs so I would remember to bring it down. Well my Lilah cat went romping and hit it and broke it. Then I walked by, didn’t see it, and got a deep cut in the top of one foot. That cut healed quickly, but left a distinct scar which still hurts.

I’ve got a few more scars from surgeries, but all were laparoscopic, so there’s almost no scarring on the outside. The inside, well, that’s another issue…