Wednesday, Feb. 29

Leap Day. And except for dicey weather early this morning, it has been a spectacularly beautiful day. We hated to learn, though, of the deadly tornadoes that swept through the nation's heartland. We are thankful that we dodged the bullet, but our hearts go out to the folks in the path of the tornadoes.

We were up at 6:30, because I intended to go to water aerobics. But around 7 a.m., the sky turned black, it thundered, and then it poured rain. Okay, so I wouldn't go to water aerobics after all, I decided. But a few minutes later, the rain stopped. Guess I'd go to aerobics. No...it started pouring again.

I gave up. I had plenty to do to keep me occupied today, anyway, without using a hunk of my time going to aerobics. I settled for a stair stepping, resistance bands, and weights exercises session.

Once I was ready for the day, around 10 a.m., I went to Mother's house to help her come over to our house, where she helped me in the kitchen. First we made chocolate cupcakes. She likes to fill the muffin tins after I mix the batter.

Then she pattied hamburgers, which Hubbie and I cooked after the cupcakes had cooled and were put in a storage container for the freezer. We bagged the burgers for the freezer as well.

After that, I started a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering. By now, it was time for lunch. Follwing lunch, Mother pattied ground turkey to be cooked later this afternoon.

At 2:30, Mother and I went to the beauty shop for haircuts. This is the first time in several months that Mother has gone to the beauty shop. Her hairdresser stopped by our house to cut her hair in November and December, and she opted out of going to the beauty shop in January.

The beauty shop has now been completely redecorated. It's very pretty, but I still don't like the full-length mirrors. Today, I simply didn't glance at myself. The hairdressers said that lots of ladies have complained about the mirrors. Most of us don't want to be reminded of our body flaws.

Back home, I fried the turkey burgers for the freezer, after which I relaxed until it was time to finish supper preparations.

The spaghetti supper was very good, served with salad, cottage cheese, and buttered French bread. Hubbie accompanied Mother to her house afterward.

I turned the TV off, and Hubbie and I read novels for an hour. I started the John Grisham book, "The Litagators," that he recently finished reading, and he continued reading another Grisham novel, "The Innocent Man." "The Litagators" is Grisham's latest novel, which I gave to Hubbie as a Christmas gift, and "The Innocent Man" is a paperback we picked up at a yard sale or somewhere.

Back to TV, we watched Alfred Hitchcock's final movie, the 1976 dark comedy/ suspense, "Family Plot," starring Bruce Dern, Karen Black, and Willam Devane. A wealthy woman offers to pay a phony psychic $10,000 to find her missing heir, a nephew. The "psychic" and her con artist taxi driver boyfriend run into a couple of serial kidnappers along the way. One of the kidnappers is the nephew, who is now a wealthy jeweler hiding a shocking past. He, along with his girlfriend, have kidnapped wealthy people and held them in exchange for the ransom of valuable gemstones. And that's not all.