There is nothing quite so funny as watching a toddler learn to jump. Cordelia wants to jump. Really, really, wants to jump. She sees other kids jumping up and down at play areas, on TV, everywhere. Several times a day she puts all of her energy and concentration into practicing this skill.

Here’s the show I get each day (this entire sequence is only a few seconds):

Cordy stands, feet slightly apart. The look of pure concentration is visible.

Crouches down in preparation.

Pops up quickly, with all the power she can muster in her little legs.

Doesn’t get air, but her heels come off the floor.

Now on her toes only, she tips forward.

Loses balance, overcompensates the other way, falls backwards on her butt.

Stands up.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

You’ve got to appreciate her determination. She doesn’t understand why she can’t get off the floor, but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

Who needs TV? I’ve got all the entertainment I can handle.

Driving to work today, I noticed an unusually high number of police cars on the road. Every mile I covered, more and more were showing up, until there was a police car parked about every quarter mile on the highway. Then I noticed all of the overpasses were also being guarded by police officers, and small creeks by the side of the road were being guarded by the watercraft safety division of the police.

What the hell is going on?, I thought. Was there a bomb? Did prisoners escape from jail? Was Congress finally abolished and we were now in a police state?

Then a low-flying plane passed over the highway and over my head (I work very close to the airport). Air Force One. As in, the plane used by the President. Of the United States. Ahhhhh, it makes sense now. The president is in town. Great. So I can blame him for making me late to work.

Around 1:30pm, I had to travel back downtown for a department meeting. I made an offhand joke to a coworker about how the president better not make me late again. Damn karma.

The road to the highway was partially blocked off by the police, and they were forcing everyone to keep moving and travel northbound on the highway only. I, of course, needed to travel southbound. As I merge onto the highway, I see a large group of police cars driving past me in the southbound lanes, followed by the president’s parade of limousines. Bastard. Now I’m late again, and it’s all his fault.

Not that I ever liked the president to begin with, but now I really dislike him. I was late twice today because of his need to lock down half of the city just to travel a few miles.

I found it somewhat amusing, though, that no one stopped on the road to wave at him or honk their horns. Not. one. single. person. No fanfare, no cheering, no waving of flags. Even the police looked pissed off to be watching him drive by.

Back during the election, he came to town a few times, and whenever they would block off part of the road for him to travel, people would stop their cars in the opposite lanes to wave and cheer and witness a political celebrity driving past them as they waved their American flags. Even people who didn’t like him would at least slow down on the road to nod their heads or pay some respect to the office of the president. This is Ohio – people here are patriotic, much to my annoyance sometimes.

Now? No one cared to stop and see him. It was even a beautiful, warm, sunny day, unusual for February in Ohio, but people went on their daily business without a care. The president’s in town? So what.

You know you’re an unpopular president when you come to a Midwestern state that you won during the election, and people don’t give a damn at seeing you drive by.

So Mr. President, do yourself a favor and don’t bother coming back to Columbus. We aren’t that interested in you and frankly? You just make us late for work.

Aaron and I are both procrastinators. So it didn’t surprise either of us that we both planned on doing our Valentine’s Day shopping after we got off work. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh?

How did we spend our Valentine’s Day evening? Well, we had a lovely dinner of McDonald’s by the light of the TV, which was showing American Idol. We exchanged gifts. For me, the Kingdom of Heaven DVD and chocolate truffles. For him, Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses DVD and the book Son of a Witch, the sequel to Wicked.

After American Idol, it was House and then the remainder of the Westminster Dog Show as we ate some of the chocolates. Yeah, we’re true romantics.

Truthfully, we both considered calling off the whole gift-giving thing. Our anniversary is next month, and Valentine’s Day has really never been that important to us. I don’t need a special day of the year to demonstrate how much I love Aaron.

He’s my best friend, my lover, my husband, and the father of our precious daughter. He’s my partner and my support. He keeps me sane, makes me laugh when I’m down, and wipes away my tears. We don’t always agree (who does?), but we care enough about each other to work through any problems we may encounter. And I’m so grateful that I have him with me on this journey of life.

I love you, dear. Happy Valentine’s Day.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I’ve gone back to school to try my hand at another career switch (which will make at least three since I graduated with my BA in History). This time it’s nursing. To test my abilities, I decided to enroll myself in the ultimate weed-out class: Human Anatomy. To make it even more difficult, it’s an online hybrid class – the lecture portion is online and I come in for a lab period once a week. I made a deal with myself that if I didn’t make it through this class, I’d give up any ideas at continuing on.

Well, now that I’m 1/2 of the way through the class, I think it’s time for an update. Turns out, I’m not too shabby with anatomy. My first two exams I scored an A on, and my first lab practical was also an A. I just took exam 3 on Sunday, and I don’t think I did quite as well. It covered muscles and joints, and well, who knew there were so many damn muscles in the body, each with weird, unpronounceable names?

We also got our first introduction to the human cadavers in the back of the room last week. As expected, the sight of these preserved and prosected bodies didn’t bother me in the slightest bit. In fact, I find them rather fascinating. They had been stripped of their skin and fat, leaving muscles, tendons, nerves and some bone on display, as well as organ structures.

Luckily, no one in my class reacted too strongly either. I heard that one student passed out in another section of the class. The only thing that bothered me was the smell. Oh god, the smell was awful. The preservative used for the cadavers is probably the strongest smelling stuff a person could ever encounter. Breathing it in, I could feel it trying to invade my lungs and preserve them. There is a large fan in the room to ventilate the area, but it doesn’t help when you’re standing right over the body to examine a particular muscle.

I now must shower first thing when coming home from class, also. The smell works its way into anything porous. My clothing, my satchel, and even my hair smells like a cadaver after class.

Still, I’m really enjoying the class, and being able to examine how everything works together on a real human body is a great experience. I’m fully expecting to pass the class at this point and continue on with my studies in nursing. And I now know that smelly dead people don’t bother me, so smelly living ones can’t be that much more difficult to work with, right?

– There’s something wrong when I see a Special K commercial featuring the Wiggles song “Hot Potato” in it. My head has never snapped up to look at the TV quite so quickly. Strangely, the thing that really caught my attention was hearing the song not sung by the Wiggles. Special K advertising using Wiggles tunes – think they are going for the mommy demographic?

– We have a new head injury record: three in a single weekend. You may remember the previous two: one from a cat dish, the other from COSI. The third happened this morning, on the Ohio State University campus, as Cordelia attempted to run after me because I had the gall to attempt to go to the bathroom without her. She didn’t make it up the step in the room, and the result was forehead meeting marble step. A quarter sized, purple lump now accompanies her other head injuries. A friend describes this period of toddlerhood as the “period of time when you think the parents abuse them.” I tend to think of it as the time when their coordination just hasn’t caught up to their speed.

– And finally, I had requests to see Cordy’s dishtowel Russian yenta, so I tried to catch her in action. Sadly, I couldn’t get her to do it. However, she did grace us with a performance of several Bible characters.

I present, Moses (“Let my people go!”):

And the Virgin Mary: