Today was a bizarre day with a bizarre beginning.

It all started at 3 a.m. when I woke up inexplicably awake and hungry. So hungry that no matter how hard I tried to distract myself with soothing, relaxing, sleep-inducing thoughts, my mind continually returned to food. Pancakes, specifically.

This was a little boggling to me since the night before we attended a church Christmas party where I ate a LOT. I had taught Zumba right before and came famished. And pretty much ate my weight in roast beef, real mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, carrots…it was so good.

So as much as I tried to reason myself back to sleep it didn’t work. I finally got up around 4:30 a.m., went downstairs, turned on Christmas music, and made myself pancakes.

When the pancakes were gone I popped in Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and did some online Christmas browsing. (What else are you going to do at 5 a.m.? Something practical like laundry? No way.) I finally crashed on the couch after 6 a.m. until Wes woke up at 7.

The next bizarre thing that happened was that I went shooting.

You heard me.

It was part of a church activity for the guys, and wives were invited. They successfully lured us out into sub-freezing temperatures with the promise of glazed donuts and hot chocolate. Pretty much manna from heaven.

This is the first time I ever held a gun. Do I look like I know what I’m doing?

If you said “no,” you’re right. John helped me and I shot it a couple times before my hands iced over and threatened to fall off. Not only was it FREEZING but there was a storm blowing in, and the wind was fierce.

I didn’t know this about John (and we’ve been married seven years), but the man can shoot. He hit the clay pigeon every time. He only started missing when the fellows were playing Annie Oakley (I know–who knew there were guy shooting games?) for a long time and his own fingers started icing over and threatening to fall off.

Here he is, and if you look closely at the sky you can see the orange clay pigeon that he just shot into three pieces.

Once I had my two shots of glory I was kind of done and joined the rest of the womenfolk in normal womenfolk-type things, like in-depth conversations about menstruation, menopause, and hysterectomies. Good times.

And the bizarreness didn’t stop there. After the activity ended we arranged for our babysitter to stay with Wes longer so we could actually go to a movie together. We never do this. We sneaked in $1 (actually, they’re $1.19 now) chicken sandwiches and bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s for lunch.

We saw Blind Side. I had serious doubts about the film when I saw Sandra Bullock in the previews with blond hair and a twangy southern accent. I was so wrong. SUCH a good movie, such a good story. And Sandra Bullock gave the performance of her life.

We were glad to be home at the end of all this, but we had fun together. Don’t EVEN ask how much I ate today. All I know is that I totally ate enough that I won’t be waking up again tomorrow at 3 for pancakes.