Survival

I survived my last day at Hyphenated Corp., despite the fact that one of the attorney editors invited Blondezilla to my goodbye lunch.

Plaid Jammies survived his cataract surgery, and although he is in a lot of pain right now, hopefully all will be well soon.

I will survive job-hunting, as I am going back to work temporarily for Mom while I look.

My neurologist says that I am surviving MS quite nicely, but he wants me to have an MRI before my insurance runs out.

So to sum up:

A really, truly, blissfully happy post

My dear and darling friend Megan just sold two mezzotints and nine pottery pieces to the Kirkland Museum. If you are interested in owning a piece of amazing artwork, check out her Etsy store.

If you just want to drool, here's a pic of my mug stash:




Here is the toad house she made for my birthday two years ago:



I am so thrilled that she is getting some major recognition for her work.

Thank you, Bakerella!

Last weekend, Mom and I broke our brains trying to balance an accounting that is due on January 26th. On Wednesday, Mom called me to tell me she had balanced it, and all that remained was to put it in the proper format and mail it to Portage County. I told her I would go in Thursday night and put all the data from the Excel file on the admin computer into the Word document that matches the court forms (said Word document also on said admin computer). I worked a full day at Hyphenated Corp. and then fought traffic to get to Mom's office. I might also mention that I had spent the entire day fighting an allergy attack of the repeated-sneezing-and-very-itchy-eyes type, and wanted more than anything else to go home and take some Benadrool to MAKE. IT. STOP.

When I got to the office, Mom was still there, but indicated she'd had a truly horrible day. Not only was she having trouble with a bank on behalf of one of her clients, her computer had died earlier in the week, and on Thursday Dad came in to install her new one.

Unfortunately, Mom didn't remember to tell him I would need the admin computer, and he took it home! So I had wasted my time and gas money, and we were no closer to gettting the accounting to the court than we had been when we couldn't balance it. I told Mom I would have Dad e-mail me the files I needed, then fax the completed forms to the office, so she could make copies and send them to the court.

When I hadn't heard from Dad by eight o'clock, I called and Mom said he was taking a nap. At that point, I was still sneezing like crazy, and I told her that I was going to take a bath, some Benadryl, and go to bed, and Dad could e-mail the files tomorrow and she could mail them on Saturday. Then I hung up on her.

After several attempts to get the right files to me, Dad sent the ones I needed, I plugged in the information, printed one copy, faxed one to the office, and called Mom and told her that I'd go in to the office after water-walking Saturday morning to get the copies made and everything in the mail (she had a client meeting at eleven-thirty).

When I woke up Saturday morning, it was early. I was worried enough about the accounting to get dressed, have coffee, let the dogs in and out and go into the office before water-walking rather than after. When I got there, I discovered that Dad had used a new password on Mom's new computer, so I had to call and wake up the scary bear to get it. After that, everything went smoothly, and I headed off to water-walking with a light heart and a filled briefcase. After class, Mom signed everything and headed into the office, and I made it to the post office in plenty of time.

So what does all that have to do with my post title? Well, between working Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday morning, plus the fact that Dad won't have the computer back until Monday, meant that I didn't have to go into Mom's office today.

Wednesday is my last day at Hyphenated Corp. Since I have promised repeatedly that I will bring in crack cookies (Jan Hagels) one last time for my co-workers, I made those today. As with any baking project, the first step is to vacuum the kitchen floor and wipe down all surfaces so there are no inadvertent inclusions of dog hair. I made three batches of Jan Hagels (40 cookies each).

My father adores peanut butter. He puts it on anything that will hold it, including garlic bread and hamburgers. He also likes peanut butter cookies, but he constantly comments than there is never enough taste of peanut butter in the cookies, whether homemade or commercial. While browsing Bakerella, I found a recipe for flourless peanut butter cookies. I made a batch of those, set two aside for Dad, and added the rest into the cookie tins for my co-workers. I didn't dip the cookies in chocolate the way Bakerella did, because I want Dad to evaluate just the cookies. I'm thinking that these would make a very sophisticated version of peanut butter kisses if I use Cemoi Truffes instead of Hershey's Kisses. JammiesFest attendees, prepare to be guinea pigs!

I also trashed my clean kitchen and burned myself, but it was all worth it.

Yay for pasta and the internet

Pasta, because that's all I can eat.

The internet, because that's the only way I can communicate.

The dentist was over two hours of hell this morning, and pain requiring T3 ever since. So instead of boring my few remaining readers and/or grossing people out, I will share adorable doggie pictures!

Littlefoot:




My brother's dog, Ralphie:

Any day that starts with the sledgehammer really isn't good.

Yesterday, I took the day off from Hyphenated Co. Last night, Mom and I went to calling hours for a friend's mother, who just died from pancreatic cancer. Mom has known the family for a very long time--one of the daughters was her student in college, the father was an attorney with an office in the same building as Mom's first office, another daughter is also an area attorney. I never met the dad, because he died quite some time ago, but the attorney/daughter was someone I got to know fairly well in the years I worked for Mom, and came to like and respect very much. I know that Mom will be available for her friend as the months pass, and I will try to do the same.

After the funeral home, Mom and I had dinner at the Olive Garden. We split an appetizer of their new mozzarella fondue, which was wonderful and very rich, and some garden salad, which was a good contrast to the fondue if somewhat lacking in nutrients (really, would it kill them to use something other than iceberg lettuce?). When we parted, I headed to BJ's, where I planned to get gas and then pick up a few groceries.

It snowed all last week, and last night was no exception--it was snowing, the wind was vicious, the cold was intense, and when I got to the gas station, I couldn't get the door over my gas tank open. I had the attendant cancel the pump transaction for me, and came home.

My garage is unheated, so if there was a freezing problem with the gas tank door, it didn't change. I smacked the door several times with a sledgehammer, and when that didn't work, took it to the local auto shop. The owner had me pull up on the latch release inside the car while he pushed on the door, and that got it open. Feeling obligated, I filled up there at $2.90/gallon, then got went to water-walking. Mom and I had a good class, after which I came home, ate lunch, took a bath and had a long nap.

Must clean, shovel and do laundry tomorrow. Ugh.

*kicks 2009 in the balls*

HARD

*thinks*

*does it again*

The year in which I lost my heartdog and my job is over, and I suspect it's just seasonal letdown, but I am feeling apathetic and borderline depressed this weekend, despite a nice Christmas and NYE.

Things have to get better soon.