January 1

J gave me a rare gift tonight - he was snoring by 8:00. Gotta LOVE the hippity hop Santa brought him for Christmas! I think we'll be outside playing with the hippity hop every day. I blew that up this afternoon, and the Jump-O-Lene he got for his birthday last year (shame, shame, lazy mama leaving it sitting in the garage all this time), and he jumped like a crazy thing for a good long while this afternoon. If that's the secret to wearing him out, seriously, we'll be out there every day. Or night, until the time changes and it's light when we get home again.

And speaking of presents, the FP 3 player he got for Christmas is WAY cool. It's a far cry from the cassette-playing Walkman I had when I was barely a teenager, that's for sure. I do find it funny that it's got some songs on it (preloaded) that are obviously children's songs, and then we've added things like "Defying Gravity" from Wicked and "I Play Chicken with the Train" by Cowboy Troy. LOLOL Clearly, children's music is not a frequent listen at our house. I figured J had already taken over the TV, I wasn't giving up the CD player too.

I'm working on an application for a prosecutor position in Johnson County, about 30 miles down the road from here. One of my devotionals for today talked about the question of something being a good thing or a God thing, and how even if it seemed like a good thing to us, it might not be what God wanted us to do. So I'm really considering this. I mean, I'm not going to get rich as a prosecutor, and it doesn't get me any closer to Brian (but then, the plan could be for him to end up here, I don't know). The high end of the salary range (assuming they'd offer me that, as I've been away from prosecution for going on nine years now) is only $3,000 more than what I make now. But I *know* there would be soul satisfaction in going back to court and kicking bad-guy ass. I can almost taste that now (especially if it's whooping up on someone who's hurt a child or who's assaulted a spouse/significant other), and I'd be a LOT better at it now than I was right out of law school. So. I'm applying, and if it's meant to be, I reckon it will. And at least with the government, you do get raises every year (unless, to paraphrase the infamous Edwin Edwards, you get caught with a dead woman or a live boy). I keep telling myself, if it's meant to work out, it will. It can't hurt to send a resume, and if I don't keep sending resumes, the perfect thing may pass me right by and I'd never know it.

Had my good-luck and good-fortune food today - black-eyed peas and cabbage, yummy. The cabbage turned out really well. I caramelized some onions, then tossed the very thinly sliced cabbage in and cooked it until the edges started to caramelize just a little. A touch of salt and black pepper, and it was perfect. I've always given those foods a miss on New Year's, and, well, you see where my luck has been. This year, I figured it was worth a shot.