As is the mother, so is the daughter (and the son)

Normally when I awake in the morning, the temperatures start to go up as the hours go by. Today they have been dropping from -8 to -10. We're not expecting to go above 0 today and the wind chills are to be around -30. That's too cold for me.

There were times recently I wondered if I should have accepted these two weeks of work. After all, with the overwhelming cost of car repairs... it would have been helpful to have that extra income. However, with the coldest temperatures since the early 90s upon us, I know the long hours would have been too much for my immune system.

I'm getting a little stronger with each day as I stay inside and my only outside duties are to start the car for the guys in the morning and walk out to get my morning paper from the "paper box" on the county road.

I have to share something funny that happened yesterday. A reader had left a comment about how similar Stephanie and I write (as she reads Stephanie's blog, too).

We are a lot alike, we used to look very much alike... back when I was younger and she was in college. We also sound very much alike. I used to tease my husband about not being able to tell which one of us was answering the phone when she still lived at home.

Well, yesterday I was checking our cell phone when he arrived home and saw we had two voice mails. I listened to the first message and was a little confused as to why Stephanie would have left a message on the cell phone, knowing I was at home.

Are you ahead of me, yet?

YES... it was actually a message I HAD LEFT the day before. I had assumed he had already listened to it so I wasn't thinking it was me. It sounded just like Stephanie! Then I realized it was the message I had left. Sheesh ...

I used to have a picture cut out of a magazine thumb tacked to my cork board. It was a print of a mother and daughter with the scripture written, "As the mother is, so is the daughter". I don't remember what Bible verse it was taken from.

Yes, we are much alike and no one actually understands me more on this planet than her. It's that combination of having been raised in my home and inheriting a certain amount of my tendencies. Except she was brilliant like her father and competitive like him (which kind of goes together as they both worked much more than I ever did for scholastic achievements).

Christopher and I share a few things in common, which was proven a few nights ago. He was checking his e-mails after a long day of school and work when he yelled from his room for me to go to the office computer (this one). He was sending me a graphic that a friend had forwarded to him.

There... in living pixels... someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make a graphic of all the Star Trek, Stargate, Babylon 5, and Star Wars space ships and how they relate to each other in size and shape. It was a thing of beauty. The two of us oooohed and awwwed over it for about twenty minutes when I decided to check out the guy who made it.

A little Googling research and I found his website and sent the URL to Christopher, where he did more research and found an updated star ship chart. He was going to send this one to his friend. I asked if he was going to tell him his mother actually found it... there was no answer. Although his closest online friends already knows he has a rather unusual Mom who shares his love of all things SciFi.

Well, his passion most likely came from my brainwashing over the years. I guess it almost balances out all the British click flick movies he sat through that his sister and I so enjoy.

When they were but tiny babies, I had no idea how much fun they would be as adults. :)

Picture: The Sledding Party by Robert Duncan; allposters.com