It's been a week of highs, of lows, of lessons learned. Here are those lessons, in no particular order:

I can keep a secret better than anyone else in one particular group I'm a member of. I'm in a group that has a secret. It's a good secret. And I am the only one in the group who has not told anyone else even though we all agreed to keep it a secret. Which surprises me because though I typically have good intentions about keeping good secrets — bad secrets and confidences are something else entirely — I tend to slip up in small ways. Not this time, though.

(Curious? When the time's right, we all will share.)

The "Jingle Bells" version sung by Barbra Streisand drives me nuts. I usually like, or at least appreciate, Barbra Streisand. Her spastic spouting of the lyrics on that song, though, makes it about the least relaxing and enjoyable Christmas song I have ever heard. It ranks right up there with "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" and Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" at the top of my Holiday Music I Cannot Stand list.

If you build it, they will come. Sometimes. See, I spent hours and hours and hours on my Holiday Guide. I crossed my fingers throughout its creation (figuratively speaking otherwise I'd have been unable to type) that I not be wasting my time. I got hits in past years on my Holiday Guides, but I wanted more. Lots more. This year I got lots more, making those lots of hours and, truth be told, lots of brain damage worth it.

Mascara works in a pinch for covering gray roots. I have a blogger event to attend tomorrow — related to this Chex Party Mix Recipe Tasting Event in Denver — and really need to color my hair beforehand. But it's fuh-reeeeeekin' fuh-reeeeeezin' in Colorado and I've not wanted to go outside to go to the store to get the hair color I need. Before showering yesterday morning, I decided to try using my mascara brush on the strands around my face that age me so. It worked! No more gray! I must say, though, it would be better if I had brown mascara instead of black. (Yeah, my hair is brown, not black.)

On a related note, I have the best husband ever. When I explained to Jim my mascara moves at lunch yesterday, he chuckled appreciatively. That's not what makes him the best, though. This is: When Jim returned to work, he texted me to say he'd stop and buy my hair color on the way home so I wouldn't have to go out in the cold. Or maybe what he said was, "So you don't have to swipe freakin' mascara through your hair." No, it was the first. He's the best. (And I think he's just happy we're past the please-pick-up-tampons-at-the-store-for-me stage.)

wife gazing lovingly at her husband