It was a fantastic vacation.  I got to see my friends Becky and Julie a couple times – once at our place for cards and dinner on the 4th and again later in the week for pina coladas on the beach after Julie’s successful job interview.  We saw a bunch more of our friends on Friday at a going-away party for a friend who is moving to DC for work.  We spent a day by ourselves on the beach, enjoying some impressively high waves for this part of the coast, reading in the shade of our umbrellas, and getting sunburned. 

And the rest of the week was spent relaxing and not feeling pressured to do anything, which meant that I made it through 3½ seasons of Heroes.  I’m really enjoying season 4 more than I expected, even though the “Oooooh, AWKWARD!!” is happening a lot.  As well as the “No, no, no!  Don’t do that, stupid!”  I’d already watched up through most of season 3 so that was mostly review, but still really fun to see again.

So, my sunburn has faded (which is great because the burn on the front of my legs was really annoying) and my alarm rang this morning at 5:15 to get me out of bed, and I had coffee for the first time in a week and a half.  The office was quiet this morning and I’m not sure if anyone really knows what we’re supposed to be working on, but we’re at least physically present, coffee cups in hand, sharing stories about what we’ve done with the last several days.  Mine doesn’t take long:  “Slept, watched too much TV, went to the beach, spent time with friends.  It was great!”

A couple more days would have been fantastic.

 Justin and I determined that we don’t really watch TV.  So what was the point in paying for it to be delivered to our house?  Justin did a bunch of work chatting with our cable provider and for an additional $5/month, removed about $70 from our monthly bill, cleared space in our media cabinets by taking out the cable boxes, and removed live TV from our lives entirely.

Yay!

We then turned around and put some of that money into Hulu Plus, which will satisfy most of our television wants, along with the websites for those actual shows.  So, TV?  Fixed.

Then we went and ended our relationship with Verizon and started new terms with Sprint.  So far, it’s been a rocky relationship.  I haven’t been able to get access to the information I want on their website and their customer service has been *really* annoying.

On the other hand, I spent my whole weekend playing around with my very shiny new smart phone.  It’s an LG Optiumus S.  It’s purple.  It has things on there that tell me the weather and what movies are showing nearby and where to find cheap gas and MY CALENDAR and my to do list (though that one’s still a work in progress) and oh, my gosh, it’s SO AWESOME.  *cue the kid at the end of The Incredibles movie there*

Unfortunately, it turns out we don’t actually have cell service at our house.  So we’re looking at what we can do about that because phones that don’t actually work, while they’re very pretty, are kind of pointless.  And, since there’s no service, I haven’t set up my voicemail yet, so if you call and get a weird answer, that’d be why.

But it was fun and terribly distracting sitting there with my brand new phone going “Oh!  What does THAT do?!”  Plus, I couldn’t get my contacts list to transfer over so I had to do that all by hand.  The bonus there is that my whole physical address book just became obsolete because it’s all stored electronically now.

Oh!  Our phone numbers stayed the same, by the way.  So you don’t have to worry about that.

And my podcasts upload automatically!  I have so many stories to listen to now!!

Anyway, it’s my first Android phone, so I’m still stumbling my way though stuff.  If any of you more experienced users have any advice, I’d love to hear it.

We went to see the new X-Man movie over the weekend, too!  It was very good.  I enjoyed it a whole lot.  You have to ignore some continuity problems, if you’re the kind of person who notices that type of thing, but I thought it was a lot of fun.  It made me gasp in surprise and alarm and made me really sad in some spots and made me laugh at points and I thought it was an entirely enjoyable experience.

A very happy belated birthday to Amy and Isaac and belated happy anniversary to Mom and Dad!  I’m sorry I didn’t call any of you (or you, Erica, for our regular chat) but I figured you’d mostly be busy, plus, like I said, no cell service.  But I hope you all had a delightful day!!

Edited to add:  I just wanted to say how tickled I am right now about how my phone has improved my outlook for this afternoon.  This morning, while getting ready for work, I checked the weather on my phone.  And it told me that it would rain this afternoon.  So I brought my umbrella into the office, even though there were clear blue skies.  It’s been thundering for the last 30 minutes (I can’t see outside to know what else is happening) and I am SO HAPPY that I have my big umbrella for what sounds like a wet walk out to my car.

And the DJs thought that this was the most ridiculous thing ever.  “Watching what?” one asked.  “Well, Jane Austin is a writer, so I guess Emma was one of her books that they made into a movie?”  And then they made comments about how he must have been sitting in his mom’s basement doing this and so presumptuous with his “white zinfandel” and how he’s not the sort of man that either one of them would ever hang out with.

And I don’t know about you, but I figure that if a man has that much refined taste, there’s a strong chance that he was actually watching this movie snuggled up with his beautiful wife.  And there’s also a big chance that he “got lucky” before the end of the evening.  I mean, really!  It’s Jane Austin!  I can’t be the only girl who gets lovey-dovey after Jane Austin’s stories.

Anyway, by my figures, a guy who’ll watch a chic flic and, presumably, enjoy time with his wife, comes out ahead of the guy who talks down on that sort of thing.  But I guess it might just be my crazy female logic.

We didn’t watch the game.  Justin played video games and I curled up in the chair beside him reading a book.  Not one of Jane Austin’s – it’s by Jim Butcher.  But I still think it was a very enjoyable way to spend the evening.

Wohoo.  What a way to spend a morning.

So we went back home and he went to bed because poisonous heavy metals and chemicals to which he’s allergic do not a happy husband make.  While he slept, I went shopping at thrift stores to find a bowl to replace the one I dropped Thursday afternoon.  That was the second such bowl I’ve destroyed at work and I’ve determined that if I’m going to go through them at this rate, then I’m going to stop paying any more than $1 for them.  I tried on some clothes while I was there, and then stopped trying on clothes and stuck to house wares because new clothes are so overrated.  And three hours, a delightful conversation with my sister, and $1.07 later, I’ve got a “brand new” bowl to take to work, microwave oatmeal in for a couple months, and then accidentally drop somewhere in the building.

Saturday was much more sedate, with a lot of sitting around and watching TV and poking at computers and letting Justin rest.  I did some organizing projects that I’d been meeting to get around to doing and watched too much “Ghost Whisperer” just because it was on TV.  And I got most of our movies inventoried on to the iTrackMine website. (Useful website, by the way, if a bit time extensive without a barcode scanner.)

Sunday, Justin was supposed to run the computer at church, but he woke up freezing with a fever and shaking, so I called the worship pastor and we both agreed that Justin should just stay in bed; so I tucked him back in, with a couple extra blankets and an electric hot pad and let him sleep away the morning, while I finished inventorying the movies and video games and tidied the house and organized the closet in my office a little better and started a loaf of bread in the bread maker and basically just puttered around the house for hours.  (Run-on sentence!)

Later in the afternoon, after Justin was up and showered and everything, a friend of ours stopped by to play card games and hang out.  It was so much fun!  The last time (which was also the first time), we met somewhere in town and ate dinner together and chatted, but it just wasn’t comfortable.  This time was so much better.  We laughed, we played card games, we introduced her to “Wonderfalls,” we played Wii games, and we watched Justin make pancakes for dinner.  It was great!

I enjoy so much having people over to the house.  Making friends and cooking them food and hanging out, relaxing and laughing.  It’s wonderful!

Today, Justin’s still not feeling tip-top, but he hasn’t been tip-top for months and months, so we’re used to this.  Hopefully we’ll hear back from his doctors soon to figure out what to do next.  Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot to accomplish at work because I’m going to be out of the office part or all of the day on Wednesday and all day Thursday because Mom and Dad are going to be here (YEA!!) and there’s a lot to do before then.

Today, I had low-level anxiety about everything and nothing at all and it was so frustrating because it made no sense.  I made it until 4:00 and then the headache that had lingered all day started pounding and I went home and curled up in bed for a couple hours.

But I felt better after my nap and I finished the bizarre movie I started yesterday (Ink – it was actually quite good, but definitely bizarre (and the first few words are the F-bomb shouted really loud, so that was surprising, but it wasn’t a recurring thing)), ate dinner with Justin, watched NCIS, and had a really wonderful conversation with Nathan when I called to wish him a happy birthday.  And I made a surprisingly yummy dessert.

So apparently food pictures are the theme lately, but I didn’t take any photos.  I’ll tell you all about it through, and then I’m going to bed.

I took 2 apples, pealed, cored, and sliced (thin slices that I cut in half again) and two little 2-cup Pyrex bowls.  And then I followed the Apple Pie by Grandma Ople recipe from AllRecipes.com, cut down for 2 apples.  So I melted 2 tablespoons of sweet, unsalted butter in a pan, added 2 1/2 tablespoons of flour to that to make a paste, and then added 1 tablespoon of water, 2 tablespoons of white sugar, 2 packed tablespoons of brown sugar, and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg.  I brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer while I took a package of Pillsbury crescent rolls and put them in the Pyrex bowls so the wide side of the triangle was at the bottom and the thin points folded over the side of the bowl like a flower.   I then put the apples in the crusts and, while the recipe says to pour the melted sugar mix over the lattice of the crust, I wasn’t sure that would work for rolls, so I spooned it right onto the apples and folded the crust over top.

The rolls say to cook them for, I think, 15 minutes at 350, so when I checked them at that time, the top of the pie-puffs were nice and brown, but I could see that the parts in the bowl were still not cooked.  So I put foil over the tops and let them cook for probably another 15 minutes.  I forget how long it was.  I just kept looking until the rolls inside the bowls were nice golden brown — putting the foil on top was definitely a good idea because they wouldn’t have gotten much too dark otherwise.  I took them out, gave them a poke to make sure the apples were done, and let them cool.  They were totally cool by the time we were ready to eat them, but a quick nuke took care of that.  We actually cut one in half, put the halves in bowls with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, and ate it that way, just because we weren’t sure if the roll was going to work.  Also, because they’re huge.  (Still, can you guess who’s not on her diet?)

It was surprisingly good!  And not terribly difficult to put together.  I was surprised about melting the ingredients together on the stove, but it was really, really good.  I used my Pampered Chef spatula that resists heat and it worked excellently for that.  The Pyrex bowls were the prefect size, and obviously oven safe.  And while it just didn’t seem like crescent rolls were going to be the right choice for the crusts, they worked out really well.

So there you go!

Happy birthday, Nathan!

Yesterday was just crazy.  I got up and went to work and don’t even get me started on work.  Ugh.  The scheduling of projects right now is just ridiculous.  I’m going to be at work most of today because they scheduled five or six airplanes this week and we haven’t managed to finish even one of them.

Anyway, I worked a full day and then went home, except instead of going home, I actually went to the grocery store to go shopping with Justin.  And we got an impressive amount of food for an impressively low amount of money just because they had so many “buy one, get one free” sales going on.  Even the check-out clerk was impressed.  Anyway, we met at the grocery store so we could do some shopping and I left there while Justin was in check-out so I could make it to band practice, where I sang with the guys until about 8:30.

So I left the house at about 6:45 yesterday morning and didn’t get back to the house until after 8:30.  And then we had dinner, cleaned the kitchen a little, and I made another attempt at making sugar cut-out cookies from this recipe I’ve been fighting with for a couple days.  The recipe said “mix it all together and let it sit in the fridge for a day or overnight.”  So I left it for a couple hours, tried to make cookies, and the batter was still very sticky.  So I left it for two days in the fridge, figuring that would help.  I pulled out a handful of batter last night, rolled it out, and it was still much too sticky to work with.  I tried adding more sugar, a recommendation from the website where I got the recipe.  I powdered the surface of the counter with powdered sugar (another recommendation).  I tried rolling it out directly on my cookie sheet and taking off the excess batter.  Nothing works!  So I finally decided I was tired of it and would just do drop cookies.  I table-spooned some batter onto my cookie sheet and threw it into the oven.  They looked great!  They flattened out to nice round cookies, the color was good, they smelled delicious.  And they completely adhered to the face of the cookie sheet.  I tried it twice, the first time I let them cool on the sheet and then had to hack them off with my spatula; the second time, I scraped them off directly after they came out of the oven and they still left dough stuck to the sheet.

I threw the batter back into the fridge and gave up.  It was already 10:00.  I was done.  I need them for the party on Saturday, and I want to have time to frost them before then, but I wasn’t going to make any more progress last night.

So I went and sat on my chair in Justin’s office for a while before deciding to just go to bed.  Where apparently I sweat like crazy because Justin asked me if I was feeling okay when he came to bed.  And then I had a dream about a giant cockroach climbing on me.  Which was still better than the dream the night before about the girl who wanted to make out with me to make Justin jealous.  That was just uncomfortable.

Anyway!  Hopefully today will go well.  I have a lot to accomplish at work, if I ever get the data that I need to do the work.  And then we still need to get the house ready for the party tomorrow.  We’ve got more than 10 people coming now, I think.  It’s going to be a tight squeeze in our house, but it should be fun.  We’re starting at 5:00, but before that, we’ve got a book club meeting at 1:00.  So we’re going to have to get everything done tomorrow morning.  It’s going to be interesting.

I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes!

I actually have A LOT more to talk about filing, but I’m going to take it elsewhere.  I’ve got the website for my organizing business, so I’m going to post all these over on that site.  And I’ll link to it from here so you can know that I’ve written something, but I won’t post it here so you don’t have be completely excited totally bored overwhelmed by it over here.

I’m writing about it because I’m helping a client through this process right now and it’s helpful for me to write it down so I can work through the whole thing.  Paperwork can be really complicated, so it’s nice to be able to really focus on an aspect of it at a time, work through my thoughts, and get them down really clearly.  But I recognize that it’s not always terribly interesting to read.

I recognize it, but I don’t always understand it.   I mean, how can that not be interesting?

Anyway.  Welcome to the beginning of May, if you somehow missed that change-over.  Did April go by really quickly for anyone else?  And May looks like it’s going to be a very busy month for me.  We had plans to go to the Ren Faire in Atlanta last weekend, but stuck around the house so Justin could be sick at home instead of on the road.  He’s starting to do better, now that we’re on day 7 of him being sick.  Day 8?  MANY days. 

In other news:

• Tuesday is my sister-in-law’s birthday, so we’re trying to figure out how to celebrate that with her when she’s busy celebrating it with all of her college friends.  Plus, she needs to do laundry, so she’s got to come visit.  Mwha-ha-ha-ha!
• My parents are going to be within 6 driving-hours from our house all next week, so on Wednesday we’re going to go meet them half-way between for dinner. 
• Sometime in the next couple weeks my mother-in-law, step-father-in-law, and grandma-in-law are all coming to visit and pack up my sister-in-law for the summer break.  Apparently they may or may not be bringing their adorable puppy.    I don’t know when they’re arriving or for how long they’re staying.
• One of these weekends we’re hoping to go to Myrtle Beach to meet up with a couple friends.   I have no idea which weekend this is happening.
• Some local friends of ours are moving and they’re going to need help moving, I believe, on the 22nd, if we’re in town.
• And if there’s a free weekend somewhere in there, we’re still hoping to make it up to the Ren Faire.

Why does it all have to happen in May?!

Plus, of course, there’s the usual craziness with work.  We’re completing one or two projects each week this month.  Compare that to next month, when we’re planning to complete three in the entire month.  Who creates this schedule?!  Drunken baboons?

 But whatever.  Life is good!  It’s pouring down rain today and even that is good because it’s better than the 85% humidity and burning hot sunshine that we had yesterday.  And I remembered my umbrella.  And I got to talk with both of my parents last night and that was fantastic!  And there was a new Castle when we weren’t expecting one.

So life is busy, but life is good, and I’m feeling happy!  I think I’ll go for a walk. 

Justin and I agreed that they should take the idea and give it to Joss Whedon.  Half of the characters, including the most lovable and innocent ones, would die in the end.  Parts of it would be absolutely terrifying.  And it would turn out so much better in the end that we’d thank him for it.

We’ve also started watching Battlestar Glactica.  Justin found the 2-part mini-series that brings you from the older series up to the new one.  I don’t feel like looking up the details on that one, but I’m sure you’re more than able to find that information if you need it.  Wikipedia:  The Source of All Knowledge.

Anyway, we watched the first half of the mini-series and I really enjoyed it.  It’s gritty sci-fi, like Firefly, but without the witty, light-hearted banter.  It’s tragic, like . . . lots and lots of stories.  War of the Worlds, Independence Day, I am Legend, Titan A.E. *Grin*  It’s humanity fighting for her life against something she created.  It’s television that doesn’t pull punches.  And it’s fascinating—an enemy that fights against the tools of war, for the total annihilation of life, and can hide itself perfectly within the population.  I’m really looking forward to seeing where this trip goes.  I really have no idea.

I really had a lovely weekend.  I got home Friday afternoon and poked around the house for a while.  Justin was working from home since no one else from his office was going to be actually in the office that day.  I sat and worked on an Excel file that should help us create a functional budget, as well as show clearly where we are with our debt and our savings situations.  I’m trying to have it all set out clearly so we can really start pushing down on the debt and packing away money for travel and such.  It’s been a mess so far, and I’m trying to make it work better.

Saturday we cleaned house.  I mentioned needing to dust, right?  I dusted for 4 hours.  Along with washing windows and tidying and getting the house looking great.  Justin cleaned the bathrooms until they sparkled and you could eat off any surface, if you didn’t mind the addition of ammonia to your meal.  He vacuumed, I dusted.  He put in a fold-out drawer at the kitchen sink.  I dusted.  This house hasn’t been this clean in a long, long time.

So on Sunday, we rested.  I worked on sewing projects.  I have several pants and a skirt that needed mending, and a couple pillows.  I sat watching NCIS while hemming the legs of a pair of pants, pinning the seams back into my skirt, and sewing the stuffing back into the pillows.  And then I sat for many hours pulling out the stitching along the hem of another pair of pants.  They’re made of this really flowing, slippery fabric and each leg is about 3 feet around.  They’re very flouncy.  The hem came out once before and I did a really bad job of sewing it back up.  The fabric gathered and one leg ended up shorter than the other and it just wasn’t good.  I’m hoping that by undoing all my previous work, I’ll be able to get it to work out much better.  I worked on pulling stitches for hours.  I finally went to bed with about six inches left to go—about 30 minutes of work.  I plan to finish unstitching tonight, iron in a new hem (the pants were too long in the first place) and manage to get a neat, clean seam started.  I might do it all by hand, since it’s such a difficult fabric.  But I’ll find out once I get started whether that’s going to actually work better or not.

It’s going to be another long week.  I’ve been working on a complicated project at work.  A project where again and again I find myself completely out of my depth.  I don’t have enough training to understand all of this yet.  Thankfully there hasn’t been much a time crunch, but if it’s not finished by the end of today, things will get dicey.

We had another meeting this morning about the RIF (Reduction in Force) situation.  There’s still no definite information on what’s going to happen with us here upstairs.  So far as I know, the people downstairs in production are still going to be on furlough for several weeks in the middle of summer.  Across the whole company, from what I understand, we’re losing 1,200 employees.  Each department is looking at a 10-15% reduction.  I’m really not sure how that works out, other than losing 2 or 3 people from my department.  Possibly.  We’re still standing on the gallows, waiting.  Just waiting.

I’ll come back and rant about this sometime.  Not about the RIF, exactly, but about the reason for it.  But not today.

I just saw that the beautiful Amy, the fantastic woman who greatly improved my older brother’s life by agreeing to marry him, linked to my post about organizing (Organizing categories and the Landing Strip).  Thank you, Amy!  I appreciate the promo!

For anyone new and reading this because of the link, I’m trying to start a small professional organizing business.  It’s been very slow-going.  But hopefully things will start to pick up soon.  More news on that as it happens.  But now and then I’m going to try to post about things that I’ve organized around my own home and ideas I have about that whole thing.  Feel free to drop me comments or emails with questions and thoughts about that.  Most of the time, obviously, this blog is just about me rambling on and on about whatever’s going on in my world.

Okay!  I’m pretty much out of time on my lunch and I’ve got to get this up and posted.  I hope you’re all having a fantastic day!  I’m still sitting here waiting for the rain that was supposed to start falling on Thursday.  (Who stole my rain?!  Give it!)  But hopefully the weather over all your heads is beautiful today.

Cheers!

I’ve been dealing with some blockage.  Of the brain kind.  Of the writing kind.  Things have been happening, thoughts like “I should write about this” have been happening, but I haven’t been able to sit down and write about them.  Haven’t been able to get my brain in a place where that sounds like a good idea.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the weather.  This is the time of year when I absolutely love the south.  It was in the 80s yesterday.  Today will be cooler, upper 60s, low 70s.  We’re expecting rain.  And rain for the next several days.  Rain will be wonderful—make all the grass and flowers and trees give up this dismal winter brown and get some green on.  Right now, where I grew up, it’s -2˚ F.  Where my sister lives, it’s -5˚ F.  At my house, it’s 64˚ F.

I love the south.

For a few more weeks anyway.  Soon it’s going to be over 100˚ F and I’ll be sweating as soon as I get out of any air conditioned building.  And freezing anytime I’m inside those buildings because southerners are crazy about their air conditioning.  And so is my husband.

The pine trees are dropping their magical fairy dust all over the place right now.  We opened the windows of the house over the weekend to air out the place from being shut up for so long.  When I went to bed, I noticed a fine layer of dust on top of my book.  Yellow dust.  Layered over everything.  Guess how much dusting I’m doing this coming weekend?  Lots!  And this is just the pine trees so far.  Just wait until the flowers are actually blooming.  Fun times, fun times . . . .

I should share the work situation and Justin’s health situation, but I don’t want to talk about it.  Not here.  Not yet.  It leaves me with a fairly limited conversation pool, unfortunately, because those two items take up a lot of the brain-use time that isn’t thinking about the weather.

I watch TV, though, so I can talk about that.  Justin and I rented Tin Man from Netflix.  It’s a 3-part mini-series based on the Wizard of Oz.  Very loosely.  But it’s really fun!  Okay, so the writing is really bad sometimes and doesn’t make a lot of sense.  And for some reason, I keep totally missing information and Justin has to explain what the heck is going on.  I think his description of the show was “The Wizard of Oz done in steampunk while on acid.”  It’s a good description.  We’re waiting for the second disk now with the 3rd part of the series.  I’m interested to see how they’re going to wrap it all up, whether they’re going to avoid the really cliché ending that I could see happening.

I’ve enjoyed watching Zooey Deschanel and Alan Cumming.  I like seeing Zooey in things (even if Justin does find her extremely attractive).  She’s a fun actress and since we watch her sister (Emily) on Bones so often, I have fun seeing how these sisters are progressing in their careers.  And Alan (who played Nightcrawler in the X-Men movies) is playing a fun character that I’m really enjoying.

Bu the thing that irritates me a lot since Justin pointed it out to me?  The turn-coat character is a shape-shifter who turns into a dog.  And he is absolutely the only dark-skinned character in the whole show.  Everybody else?  Pale, pale white.  This guy?  Dark brown African American man.  Seriously, now!  Didn’t anybody think about that just a tiny little bit?!

I’m also still watching NCIS.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through season 2.  It’s going to take me a good long while to watch all these but I’m enjoying it.  I’m a little confused about the episode I watched last night (mostly “Why?” and “Why those people in particular?”) but still lots and lots of fun stuff.

And since I’m always happy to see Firefly people employed, Justin and I watched the first episode of Castle on Monday (I’m pretty sure it was Monday).  Nathan Fillion plays Richard Castle, a best-selling mystery novelist with charisma flowing off him like stink off a skunk.  Pat, one of our friends, called it “The anti-Bones.”  Best-selling author works with law-enforcement to solve crimes.  Yea!  It’s also been explained as being pretty much the same old story as told so many other times before, only better.

It really is a whole lot of fun.  Fillion is so much fun to watch no matter who he’s playing.  And in this show, he’s a frat-boy author with great insight into people and a whole lot of charisma.  He’s cocky and impulsive, but cares a lot for his daughter and mother.  And it drove him crazy until he worked out the problems with the murder in the first episode (murders based around scenes from his books).

We really enjoyed it and we’re recommending it to pretty much everybody.  It’s on at the crazy time of 10:00 EST, but it means we’ll watch it curled up in our pajamas before climbing into bed.  Or we’ll just record it, like everything else.

Anyway.  You should watch it.  It’s fun.

This is how I know it’s a good show.

When Justin and I were working our way through Buffy, we hit the episode called “The Body” and if you’re at all familiar with the show you know why I’m bringing it up.  I bawled and bawled after that.  Like, sat on the couch shaking while Justin whispered comforting things in my ear bawled my eyes out.  And Whedon did that to me so many times–when Amber died, when Oz left, when Fred died, when Wash died in the movie, again and again and again.

Good TV.  But rough on me.

I have no idea where I’m headed with this.  Just that I got done with NCIS a few minutes ago and, after sniffing a few times, giving Justin a kiss and a hug, and poking at my computer a few minutes, I wanted to write about it.

It’s been an unpleasant couple of days.  We’ve been sick.  Not anything diagnosable or something we can medicate and just be done and over with, but this awful, lingering nastiness that just won’t shake.  Justin’s eye infection came back with a vengeance and he’s seen both our ophthalmologist and his internist about it.  They’re running more blood work to see what they can see, but until then, he’s putting in eye drops and wearing an eye patch when light gets too painful.  And taking Advil to deal with the headaches.  I’m eating cough drops and drinking tea trying to keep my voice and pull the cold out of my chest, so very tired most of the time.  I don’t want to talk about Valentine’s Day.

Still, things aren’t too bad.  Our insurance is fantastic.  One of the prescriptions we picked up on Saturday didn’t even have a copay.  We’re both still able to work.  Justin can even work from home, which is great.  My birthday is in a couple days and I’m completely avoiding the normal freak-out when I get all depressed and think that no one’s going to remember or care.  Yeah, I do that.  I’m pretty sure I mentioned it last year.

I took out my navel ring tonight.  I looked at it while in the ladies room at work earlier today and realized that it was bleeding.  Not from the piercing itself, which isn’t uncommon for me, but from a split in the skin behind the piercing.  It’s migrated forward leaving a funky little trail behind it and that trail had split and was bleeding.  It never really healed, though.  The piercing itself has always oozed and been, frankly, a little gross.  Kinda smelly.  I showed it to Justin and we agreed that it was probably best if I just took it out.  Let it heal up.  Get it done again later on if I want.

So I took it out.  Stiiiiiiinky!  Wow, I didn’t expect it to smell like that.  And then I soaked it little, peroxized it a little, put Neosporin on it.  It feels really weird.  I’ve had that little metal rod in my belly for how long now?  Just over three year I think.  Now it’s this hard little knot with little purple holes in my flabby, flabby belly.  Too much?  Sorry about that.  But I miss it a little!  It’s a good call, pulling it out and letting it heal up.  But it’s a little sad.  Gillian, Sara, and I all got those done and mine was the last one to come out.  I can’t remember if Sara got her’s done again or not.

Anyway.  I’m just in a weird mood, tired, not feeling great.  And it’s about 10:00 so I’m going to go take my vitamin and curl up in bed with my book for a while before falling asleep with the light on.  I’ll think of 5 Grace things in the morning.  And I’ll catch up with ya’ll again in the sunshine of tomorrow.

Good night!