Too Much TV

I find myself once again in the position of doing three jobs instead of my usual two. Which is seriously cutting into my blogging time.

Also, it has several weird side-effects on my brain, which are probably interrelated, and can most adequately be summarized as: I'm freaking scatterbrained. Like, even more than usual, which if you've been around here long you will know is pretty damned scatterbrained. So I apologize in advance for the random, almost Joycian, tone of this post.

***

When I go home at night and am done with work for the day, I don't want to do anything remotely intellectual, so I end up watching a lot of TV.

As of this weekend, I'm all caught up on Sherlock. Still loving it. Can't wait for more. Which is fantastic because I generally don't like mysteries. (Yeah, I know, I watch Castle, but that's all about Nathan Fillion and the characters, not the mysteries themselves.) I think possibly my very favorite thing about Sherlock is how everyone, everyone, everyone thinks Sherlock and John are lovers. In my mind, it happened over a few beers in the writers' room:

"You know the entire internet is going to be shipping these two."

"God, yes. But I don't see any way to discourage it."

"Then let's not. Let's just run with it. Make it part of the show bible that everyone just assumes they're sleeping together."

"That's horrible. And brilliant. Do it."

It fills me with utter glee every time it happens, or every time Watson mutters under his breath about people talking.

(Do I ship them? Absolutely. But in a strange way, because Sherlock is very asexual to my mind. But the fact that John can't keep a girlfriend fills me with delight.)

***

Holy shit, I think I just linked Sherlock and Collin, a little bit. Because I'm a nerd.

***

Speaking of my being a nerd, yesterday I got restless and went out shopping, and I bought Christmas decorations I probably didn't need and also I bought a pair of shoes. They are simultaneously the hippest and nerdiest thing that I currently own.

Hip, because, well. They're Converse. Not even cheap knockoffs!

And nerdy, because the reason I got them was because I'm putting together my Doctor Who cosplay costume:

(The shoes are red in that picture, but he has an apparently unlimited supply of them in various colors.) Complete with working up a Doctor-appropriate (happily excited!) patter about a somesuch field that had been bombarded with thisorthat particles that must have caused a radical rearrangement of certain physical characteristics -- tall to short, thin to fat, and, yes, male to female. And yes, I did in fact order a sonic screwdriver with some of my birthday money. I need to hit up some thrift stores for a buttondown shirt and a tie, though.

So, yeah. NERRRRRRRD.

***

I'm only just beginning season three of the new Doctor Who show, though, which makes me wonder if I'll be able to catch up before MarsCon. I love it, but I find I can't watch more than about two episodes at a time. It's heartbreaking, even when I'm laughing hysterically.

But I just finished season three of How I Met Your Mother, which is almost as heartbreaking at times, but I pop through those shows like candy. It helps that they're shorter, I suppose. And that I know everything is going to end happily for everyone, no matter how painful it is to get to.

***

And now, my dear friends, I have rambled enough. Or possibly just a bit too much. It's hard to tell. But at any rate, I'm still doing three jobs and at least two of them are pinging urgently right now, so I'd best get to it. I'd promise to try to write more regularly, but... it's probably not in the cards for this week, at least. If I don't post before then, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Birthday, Me!

Hey, it's my birthday! I'm now officially 40-ish.

Things actually kicked off yesterday, as Jenn took me to lunch and Caren gave me a present, which was sweet of them both.

I confess it was a little weird to wake up this morning and not have gleeful kids or presents waiting, but I had Facebook greetings from the book club and a couple of cards to open from my aunt and uncle (addressed simply to "Liz" -- I should mention in my thank-you note that I'm not planning on changing my name back). And I made myself some chocolate-and-peanut butter oatmeal for breakfast, so I'm not entirely treat-less.

I have a metric buttload of work to do today, but it should move relatively quickly, I think. I'm hoping so, at least, because I want to skip out of work an hour or so early, so I can stop by the bank and cash an editing check and then do a smidge of shopping before I go pick up the kids. Then I'll take them out to eat, because I don't want to cook or eat leftovers on my birthday. (If anyone wants to join us tonight, shoot me a text or an email!)

Tomorrow evening I have a couple of friends coming over for dinner, and then on Sunday, we're having dinner with my family. So, yay, birthday weekend!

I'd say, let the festivities begin, but first... buttload of work. Stupid work.

Don't Judge Me

Here's the deal: work is insane. My documentation specialist is having some personal issues that have severely limited her ability to, well, work, and so I've been doing all the documentation for the last couple of weeks, on top of my own usual work. Plus there's a proposal going on, and while I'm not directly sucked in, I'm still getting a lot of documentation-style requests, getting tables prettied up and spreadsheet formulas double-checked and stuff like that. Eventually I'll have to do a scrub on the finished product, too.

It's been a busy week or so at home, too -- we had a Hallowe'en party on the 27th, and then there was Hallowe'en itself last week, and then I had a Girls' Night party this past weekend, all of which required some level of preparation and shopping and cleaning and such. To go with that, there's all the usual life stuff going on -- school conferences and taking the cat to the vet and paying bills and "No, you're not wearing that to school, now march right back upstairs and change," and snuggling on the couch and reading with the kids and making birthday plans for this weekend. Penny wistfully told me that, since Matt and I had separated, she never gets to spend time alone with me any more, which is a fair complaint, so I'm taking off work tomorrow (when she's out of school anyway) and spending it with her.

And my second job -- the writing/editing gig -- has really taken off and exploded lately. I don't know if I'd mentioned it on this blog yet, but I'm being promoted to editor of the entire short story line for Torquere. It'll be official in January, but I'm starting to get pulled in now, learning the ropes by way of assisting the current shorts editor, helping to vet submissions, hashing out the 2013 themes and calls, etc. On top of that, I'm still proofreading, still editing for JMS Books, still the editor for an anthology that's due out right after the holidays. And still, when I can squeeze it in, writing. (I woke up early Saturday with a story idea and wrote almost 1000 words before I even got out of bed. Thank goodness I keep the iPad on my bedside table.)

I come into work in the morning, and there's always something that needs to be done immediately, if not sooner. And when I get home in the evening, it's usually the same. So when I do get an evening or a day off, I tend to spend it like I spent yesterday -- loafing on the couch watching a really unhealthy amount of television. For the record of shame: two episodes of the BBC's Sherlock (DVD/BluRays of which would not be an unwelcome birthday present, by the way), three episodes of Doctor Who (2nd new season), and... I lost count, but at least six episodes of How I Met Your Mother (because they're like popcorn or candy and everyone, everyone, everyone on that show is gorgeous and lickable, even the wacky sidekicks). But, you know, I also did the grocery shopping and several loads of laundry and made an amazing pot roast for dinner, so I wasn't utterly sloth-like. And I watched about a dozen episodes of SciShow, too, so I didn't entirely let my brain melt.

So now I'm off to work like crazy (I had three tasks waiting in my inbox when I logged in on top of the usual Monday stuff, and I took off this twenty minutes to let you all know why I haven't written in the last week -- don't you feel special?) and hopefully after this week, things will settle down a bit and I'll be able to get back on the blog.

Rainy and Grey

I didn't get to the Fall Festival on Sunday, mostly because the weather turned cold and rainy, and between that and my cough still not being completely gone yet and the mood I was in, I decided to just stay home.

Mood... yeah.

By all accounts, the weekend went pretty well. I went to the thirty-one party with Elizabeth and KT on Friday, and afterward we went out to dinner at Corner Pocket. Small hiccup when we got there and realized I'd left my purse at the party, so Elizabeth and I had to leave KT sitting there by herself for fifteen or twenty minutes while we ran back to get it, but after that, we had a lovely time, and then KT and I went back to the house and sat and talked for a while longer.

Saturday, I did some more decorating in the dining room, then discovered that the Blu-Ray player would, in fact, play the MP4s of Big Bang Theory that Elizabeth had burned for me after she'd heard I hadn't seen the first couple of seasons, so I started watching those.

Then my date came over -- he made dinner for me while we watched Avengers, and after we ate, we went over to Braz's to play Cards Against Humanity with him and his new girlfriend, Megan. That went really great -- we played down the entire deck of black cards, and laughed ourselves silly.

I got up Sunday morning, went to the store, then came home and decided the weather really wasn't going to make the Fall Festival anything like enjoyable, so I put the BBT disc back in and started up a marathon.

Somewhere around lunchtime, I fell into a funk, and by mid-afternoon, it had progressed to the point where every time I wasn't actively watching something funny, I'd start crying. Immediately. Like, if I paused it to go to the bathroom.

I don't have PMS to blame it on this time, even. The funk is still with me today, and I'm only really staving off tears because work is going to be insanely busy this week, plus I just got ten stories of various lengths (from 5,000 words to over 30,000) to evaluate for inclusion in the anthology I'm editing, so I've got plenty to keep myself occupied. And even all that is only barely holding tears at bay. So... I guess the denial phase is about up, and it's time for the much less attractive (but possibly less creepy) bargaining/depression phases.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm not as ready to move on as I thought I was. So I've shut down my profile on the dating site, and sent an email breaking things off with the guy I'd dated a couple of times. I feel bad for hurting him, but I can't think of anything less fair than subjecting someone else -- especially a potential romantic interest -- to my current mercurial state of mind.

I may be scarce here on the blog for a while again, because there's only so many times I can whinge about being scared and lonely and scared of being lonely before it gets tedious for even me.

And also, as I mentioned, I'm insanely busy with boring, un-bloggable work stuff and less boring, but still mostly un-bloggable, editing stuff.

But I'll try to pop in now and then with some kid anecdotes to keep things light.

Talky

Because she loves me, KT posted this on my Facebook wall last night:

Of course, by the time I saw it, I was already into this week's episode of Leverage and chatting with her, so I didn't actually do any writing. But it's an awesome picture anyway. And true. I should be writing.

I should also be editing, as I have a novel on my plate that I need to get back to its author before I go on vacation in -- erp! -- one week.

Unfortunately, what I should be doing at work today is approximately a metric assload of paperwork. Hm, maybe instead of trying to make it palatable with music, I'll put a movie on the iPad (one I know well enough to listen to instead of watch) and see how that works. And maybe I can break the paperwork into subtasks, and alternate with the editing a bit.

Anything to get (and keep) myself motivated.

***

Happy joy joy moment of the day: Alex got up a bit before six and went to the bathroom. (I knew it was Alex and not Penny because Alex neither closes the bathroom door nor flushes without a reminder.) And then he went back to his room.

Ten minutes later, when my alarm went off for the second time, he came into my room, as usual, and climbed up on the bed.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "How're you doing this morning?"

"Good."

"Yeah? You sleep good?"

"Yeah."

"How's your pullup this morning?"

"It still has a picture."

Dude. That's three mornings of the past four that he's gone through the night with a dry pullup! The first two were at Matt's apartment, and while I'd celebrated, I'd kind of wondered if it was because he wasn't sleeping as deeply there (unfamiliar room and bed, you know how it is) so I wasn't really expecting it to come back to the house with him.

But whatever the reason, it seems he's starting to move into nighttime control, finally!

(And further reason for celebration, as a friend pointed out to me -- it means that he's not excessively traumatized by Matt and I splitting up. Kids who are traumatized tend to lose potty training, not gain it. So we can feel good that all the effort we're putting into the kids is paying off.)

Spotted

Blog posts are about to get spotty. I'm working two different proposals and dealing with Life.

We had a pretty good weekend, though our Father's Day dinner with my parents got canceled because my mom came down with a case of pinkeye.

But Matt seemed to like the presents I got him, and we had a nice, quiet day at home.

And I got my new computer, and got my files all transferred and worked through some idiot issues and am pretty much up and running!

And now I need to be in a meeting.

Sorry, guys...

Photo'd

I have Penny with me at work this morning, because our school district, in their infinite wisdom, ended school on a Thursday, and the daycare summer camp doesn't start up until Monday.

She's already created a little hidey-hole for herself by wedging into a corner by the bookshelf and propping her blanket up as a doorway.

It's gonna be a long morning.

***

On the plus side, we all went up to Busch Gardens yesterday and met up with KT and Kevin and Jess and Jeff and Leslie (who I hadn't realized were in town, much less at Busch Gardens) for a couple of hours, and that turned out to be lots of fun. I haven't seen Jeff or Leslie since last year's Summer Bash, I don't think.

Alex pouted a bit when we went to the Land of Dragons instead of Sesame Street, but it didn't take him long to get into the swing of it.

(That's Alex in the front, and Penny and Jess as twin dragonettes inside the egg.)

Meeted

Nothing like getting to work at 8:22 and discovering that I'm expected to sit in a meeting that starts at 8:30 and runs to 10:30, and then there's another meeting that starts at 11.

Compared to some managers, I have it light with regard to meetings, I know, but it's still too many for my taste.

Guess there won't be much of a journal entry from me today...

That Kind of Day

After a quick review of my email, it looks like it's going to be the kind of day where I spend it all working on a couple of different projects, for two different proposals, neither of which I have any idea how to do.

Which may contribute to it being the kind of day where I feel the need to stop at the ABC store on my way home.

***

Last night, just as I was about to go to bed, I glanced at the top of the entertainment center, where Alex has been leaving his new Captain America figure... and it wasn't there. I looked around on the floor... in the play room... No Cap.

"Did Alex bring Captain America back inside after he went out?" I asked.

I went out to see if he'd maybe left it on the porch or driveway.

"I'm counting it as gone," Matt said.

Half an hour later, unable to sleep, I got a flashlight and went back out. I walked down the street to the house where Alex's neighborhood friend lives, to see if he'd maybe left it in their yard. I walked all the way around their house, checking out the toys in the yard and the deck of their porch... No Cap.

This morning, when Alex got up, I had him put on his shoes. "Where'd you go yesterday with your Captain America?"

He led me by the hand along the edge of the street to his friend's house. "He wasn't home. But the car was there!"

"Did you maybe put Captain America down to knock on the door?"

"I knocked with Captain America!" Of course he did. Silly me.

"And then what?"

"I came home!"

"You didn't play with anyone else?"

"No."

Positive that he'd put the toy down somewhere, equally positive that some other kid had found it, I sighed and turned us homeward. Maybe later I could canvass the neighborhood kids and see if any of them had it. "Well, let's look around inside again. Do you remember where you went when you came in?"

Alex frowned and went into the play room, which I'd already searched. Slowly, he walked over to the computer desk, which I'd already looked at. Then he pushed aside the computer chair to look at the window... where Captain America was lying on the window sill.

Never Ending

Had a nice extra-long weekend that was only somewhat spoiled by my being called in to work on Thursday afternoon to get pulled into working on a proposal.

I hate working on proposals. I'm really hoping that I won't be on the "weekends? what weekends?" team for this one.

But on the plus side, it gets me a charge number to help buffer what was otherwise going to be a pretty slow week, work-wise.

On the other hand, I've now got so much stuff to do, between work and editing and writing and general Life Stuff that I'm at a point where I think, after I finish this blog entry, I'm going to need to make up a work schedule and assign blocks to the day.

Anyway, yeah: good weekend. I went to see Avengers for the fourth time on Friday (probably my last in-theater viewing, alas) and then we went to the Hegemony and played Rock Band until the wee hours. Whoo, Rock Band!

Saturday morning we ran some errands, and then in the afternoon, we took the kids to Busch Gardens. (It was not as crowded as I'd feared it would be, but I'm still looking forward to, say, Wednesday evening visits, when it will be much slower. In fact, I'm wondering if, once school is out, we could get away with just making every Wednesday Busch Gardens night.)

Sunday we actually stayed home all day (aside from running errands) -- a nice rest-and-recover day. And then Monday, we were back at the Hedge for a big Memorial Day cookout. It was supposed to be big, anyway, but one family canceled due to illness, another dropped out because they had something else they'd rather do (and seriously? they needed to come up with a plausible lie, there), and a third failed to get the message entirely until it was too late... so it was, instead, a small Memorial Day cookout.

So, off I go to have some coffee and breakfast and make up my work-block for the day.

Have a good one!

Whoops

It was a fairly normal morning -- runaround and kids being alternately grumpy and fantastic, breakfast and packing and stuff. More stuff than usual to carry out to the car, because it's Monday and there's Alex's blankets for naptime, and the daycare check, plus it's "teacher appreciation week" at daycare, so there were cards, and Penny had a diorama project to take to school.

But all in all, pretty much normal.

And then I pulled into the parking lot at work and was nonplussed to see that both of my usual parking spaces had been taken already. Even with me dropping Penny off at school, I'm usually in the first five or so people in the office. Is someone having a meeting that I'd forgotten about?

And then I came in and saw who was setting up in the conference room and remembered that our senior management chain from up at corporate is all in the office today. Which you'd think I wouldn't have forgotten, because I'm the one who set up the catered lunch.

So, uh, today is busy, and I'll have to tell you about my weekend and gush about how awesome The Avengers was another time.

Drip

Rainy weather. Drip drip drip.

Taking Penny to Family Diabetes Camp this weekend. Gonna be rainy and cold, with highs in the low 60s. Not looking forward to that part of it much, but Penny's enthusiasm is undampened by the weather. So far. Drip drip drip.

Scrambling to get a document done today that has to go out tomorrow, so we can leave early to tomorrow to get to camp before the traffic gets bad, like it did last year. Except the subcontractor guy who wrote several sections of the document is, apparently, still centering lines by putting a lot of spaces in front of them. I didn't know people DID that any more. Drip drip drip!

Oh, coffeemaker?

Make with the drip.

Five Things Make A Post

1. I'm about 4/5 of the way through the speed-edit I've been trying to push through this week, which means I'm pretty much right on schedule. Go, me!

2. I'm only about 1/5 of the way through the enormous stack of paperwork on my desk at the Day Job, though, which has me a bit behind schedule there. Boo.

3. Assumption of Desire was on an Amazon Top 100 list again this morning! This time, I got a screen capture before it fell off again. (I put the picture up on my Facebook author page.)

4. Alex came in and snuggled with us this morning when my alarm went off, which he hasn't done for a while. Even though he was squirmy and talky and refused to let me go back to sleep for another five minutes, I was glad for it. I've been thinking too much lately about how, entirely too soon, my boy will decide it's undignified to cuddle with his mom.

5. Got all our paperwork appropriately signed and notarized and such for Diabetes Camp at the end of April, and it should be going out with today's mail. So we're all set for that. I need to remember to go on the calendar at work as taking the next day off, because I'm not going to be getting a lot of sleep that weekend. And to
buy a sleeping bag, because struggling with sheets last year was stupidly frustrating.

(CrA)^z

I'm currently editing three projects for Torquere: two novels and a novelette. One of the novels isn't due out until June and is already in the proofreader's hands and is therefore well underway. The novelette has had its first round of edits and is back in the author's hands. The other novel just hit me over the weekend... and thanks to a communications backfire, its schedule is extra-tight, so I have, essentially, one week to finish my first round of edits.

I also just got sent another novel to proofread (that's easier than editing, but still pretty time-consuming) that's on another tight-ish deadline; I've got about two weeks to get that one done.

My latest release, "Assumption of Desire", will be coming out from Torquere tomorrow. Obviously, that's complete now, but I've got some online publicity/marketing gigs to line up and execute, because that's part of my obligation as the author. (Speaking of which, if you're interested in winning a copy of the story, today is your last day to enter the contest!)

April's calendar is already nearly filled to the brim: Spring Break (including an Art Day for Penny and a day at Busch Gardens for everyone), Easter, a D&D game, Matt's and my anniversary, a kids' birthday party, two doctor's appointments, and a weekend at Diabetes Camp. And at some point after the show finishes I need to drive down to Hampton to pick up the art I bought. Plus several adult friends having birthdays. And KT and Kevin may be moving somewhere in there.

The Day Job's insanity includes a stack of paperwork that's currently twice as tall as the inbox, and an electronic "stack" nearly twice as tall as that, plus several new responsibilities that I need to remember to fold into my routines.

Plus all the usual stuff like making meals and taking the kids to school and trying to keep the house from completely falling into a slimepit. And occasionally trying to get to the gym.

Things are crazy, and are going to stay crazy for the next month, is what I'm saying.CRAY-ZEE.

On the plus side, I'm really going to appreciate the assorted vacations that are lining up for late summer and early fall.

Recovery

The proposal is done. Our contracts manager sent it out yesterday afternoon. My sinus infection is (slowly) clearing up; I have a mild but persistent sore throat, but the headache is largely gone. There are a couple of documents due out today; I'm in the office to get those out the door and then I'm going home.

I'll work on the story idea I had last night, for a submission call that's due in two weeks. (Though it's possible that if I'm mostly done by that point, I can send in a precis and get an extension.) I'm meeting a friend for lunch, and we'll take it slow and easy. It's Friday, so we'll do dinner with the Hedge and hang out at their place until late.

Matt has his monthly D&D game tomorrow, which means he'll get up with the kids tomorrow morning. I'm going to sleep as late as humanly possible, and then I'll get up and do stuff. Not sure what stuff -- aside from Matt's game, there isn't anything on our calendar. Maybe we'll resume shopping for a new fridge. Maybe I'll make a run down to Sam's Club. Maybe I'll go to Bath and Body Works and buy more good-smelly stuff that I don't actually need. Maybe we'll take the kids to see The Lorax. Whatever. Since Matt's gaming, I'll probably take the kids over to the Hedge so they have someone to play with and don't drive me bonkers. (Unless the Hedge has other plans, in which case I will resort to the clever combination of bribery, guilt, and shouting that so characterizes my parenting style.)

Sunday morning I'll get up with the kids and we'll do the usual chores and stuff. See my list of "maybe"s from the previous paragraph; they all still apply.

And Monday? I'm not going to work on Monday, either. So there.

Too Long

It's been too long since I last wrote. Sorry about that, gang.

Proposals suck in my brain and make me incapable of life function, it seems sometimes. And the Daylight Savings switch happened this past weekend, so my brain is still refusing to function in line with that, too. All I want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for about three days.

Things are starting to come together with the proposal now, though -- we're still editing, but all the sections have been written and vetted and approved as compliant. It's just a question now of squeezing out the unnecessary stuff so we can fit it all in under the mandated page-count. (This is where college turns out to have been useful -- all that time spent playing with the formatting on my papers so they would fit the pagecount requirement has, it turns out, given me valuable skills.)

***

Penny's diabetes has been kicking our asses lately. Saturday night, she accidentally got Humalog instead of Lantus at bedtime, which meant Matt stayed up until after 1 AM checking her sugars and chasing a viciously persistent low... and then we spent all day Sunday correcting the high from lack of basal insulin. To make matters worse, she went to a friend's birthday party Sunday afternoon and had not only cake, but pizza, that bane of diabetics everywhere.

So when the school nurse called me at lunch yesterday to tell me she was crazy high, I wasn't that surprised... but when the nurse told me she was also showing moderate ketones, I freaked out. Spilling ketones is bad. We're supposed to call the endocrinologist's emergency number when she's at moderate or higher levels. But, pizza, I thought, and told the nurse to correct generously and recheck her in two hours to make sure it was taking hold.

I spent the next two hours on pins and needles. Was I going to have to leave work early to pick my daughter up from school and take her to the hospital?

When the nurse called back, the bad news was that her sugars were pretty much the same as before. Though Penny reacts to Humalog pretty late in its 4-hour window, and she'd eaten lunch in there, so for her to have remained at a stable level wasn't that bad. But the good news was that she was back to being negative for ketones. No emergency calls or hospital trips for us. Whew.

Once I'd started to calm down, I realized: I don't think she ever got her shot for breakfast. Like, at all. I'd started to do the math, but whe'd been waffling over what kind of yogurt she wanted, so I'd walked away to do something else while she finished deciding, and I think I got distracted and never went back to it. Mea culpa. I won't even get into how that made me feel about myself; you can probably put a solid guess together.

She was back into normal range by dinner, and even had a mild low when Matt checked her at 10. (Not a scary one, just a "hey, have a little milk" one.) And this morning she was right where we like to see her. So hopefully that episode is done with.

***

Back to work. The proposal doesn't go out until Friday, which means I won't be done with it until Friday. But I'm totally taking Friday afternoon -- and probably Monday -- off, as well.

Proposed

This was not the Best Ever Morning. It started out okay, except for the inevitable post-weekend weight gain when I stepped on the Wii Fit. But then Penny denied Alex's request to let him ride in the booster seat, which caused him to pitch a complete wobbly. (Flag, flag, hat. Both kids were completely jerky and unreasonable about the whole things. I thought about asking the daycare manager if she knew of any gypsies in the area who were in the market for some fresh kids.)

My day did not improve when I walked into the office and was waved down before I'd even put my things down and got dragged into a proposal. I'll be writing about three pages, which is trivial, and then I'll be coordinating putting everyone else's stuff together, which is distinctly nontrivial.

As usual, the proposal is due on a Monday, which means I'll be working some portion of the weekend. I've already told the guy in charge that Saturday is Right Out, as I have plans, but I can pretty well expect to be here late Friday and probably have to come in on Sunday, too.

I hate proposals. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em. Every time I get sucked into a proposal, I consider that Matt has health insurance that I could be on if I just walked.

And then I fired up my computer to find that I'm going to be taking over a couple of administrivia-type jobs here at the office. Which I hate.

So it's shaping up to be a pretty awesome day and week.

Cursewords apply.

Get Your Cheese!

...'Cause I've got some whine.

Apparently, if you stop going to the gym because you're sick and then spend the better part of a week eating junk food and drinking wine and then eating more junk food, you gain some weight. Who knew, right?

So now I'm not so much poking my toe at that line in the sand as have stepped boldly over it, and now I really, really, really need to get my act together and stop eating like I don't care. (Or else, you know, actually stop caring. But that doesn't seem like the wise move.)

Also on the whine front: bigwigs in the office today, so I had to dress up. My only winter dressy shoes are ankle boots with a four-inch heel, and I'm having feet problems again lately (possibly because of all the weight I've packed on in the last year -- I don't deny it) so I'm praying to all the gods that I don't have to do a lot of standing and walking today.

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, by the way. I had Penny with me in the morning and had to scramble to get my office set up and my computer back online so I could deliver software (of course it didn't go out on Friday) by the 8:30 deadline and then spent most of the rest of the day locating and unpacking all my stuff.

I rearranged my office while I was at it. I like the new arrangement; there's a lot more space in here now. But I need to move all the stuff on my walls, now. And I could use a brighter lamp, because the new arrangement no longer allows for direct lighting. Which means I need to make a Target run.

But not in these shoes.

Pileup

Software delivery at work. Four components, full audit required, and extra delivery documentation. With a PM who does not organize very well, or read his emails very carefully, or explain what he wants very well. Has to be ready to go by the end of the day Friday.

Penny's out of school Friday. As is our usual plan for school days, I've got her for the morning, and Matt will take her for the afternoon.

And to make it all more exciting, they're replacing all the carpet in our office, starting on... Friday! Which is to say that before I leave today, I have to pack up all my loose items and stack them in the hallway, and then pull the drawers out of my desk and stack them in the hallway, and then unplug all my electronics (lights and heater and computer and phone and monitor and printer and everything else that plugs in) and... stack them in the hallway. And tomorrow I won't have access to my office at all.

I'm pretty well expecting tomorrow to suck. A lot. For that matter, today isn't looking like it'll be a picnic.

***

But Alex made sure I smiled at least once this morning.

"HELLO. I. AM. IRON MAN!"

"Oh, hello, Iron Man!"

"...Iron Man wants a hug from Iron Mommy."

(For the record, Iron Mommy was happy to comply.)

Llama Drama

One of Alex's favorite books lately is Llama Llama Mad At Mama. Reading it is a ritual -- he has to read the "MAD AT MAMA" line himself, and he must linger over the little llama's tantrum and enjoy the vicarious visceral thrill of throwing things and making an enormous mess. And when it's done, he explains to me earnestly that even when he's mad at me, he still loves me. I love reading it with him almost as much as I enjoyed Llama Llama Red Pajama.

I particularly love the phrase "llama drama", which gets used in both books.

Which, I suppose, is good, because there is llama drama shaping up at work. I can't talk much about it, because it may well involve Official Actions of one severity or another, but it's giving me a hell of a headache. No worries; I'm not in any trouble, but I'm tangentially involved as a manager. I very much fear that it's going to result in the departure (one way or another) of one of the dramatis personae. Which would be bad, because we need them.

Which is all I'm going to say about the llama drama for now.

***

So I took Penny with me to Bed, Bath, and Beyond this weekend and I tried her patience right down to the very last thread while I picked out a new shower curtain, liner, floor mats, towels, and counter accessories. I wanted a new curtain rod as well, but I want the kind that mounts directly on the wall, and the only ones of those they had were the curved ones, and our bathroom is not well-situated for one of those. So I contented myself with new rings, and eventually I'll make a run down to Lowes or Home Depot for a mounted curtain rod.

If I must say so myself, it looks fantastic.

The color is a little weird because of my phone, but the new colors are a rich chocolate brown and a gorgeous deep red, with cream and silver accents. I think it manages to be attractive and simple without being either austere or so girly that Matt will feel out of place. And as a bonus, the new floor mat I got to go by the sink is actually long enough to cover the whole length of the double sinks, so we can both stand completely on it now, instead of having to either crowd the center or stand one foot on and one foot off!

To console Penny for having to wait while I dithered over all the options for this, I let her pick out the trash can we needed for the kids' bathroom. She, naturally, went straight for the most bling-a-riffic, rhinestone-studded wastebasket I have ever seen in all my life.

Every single one of those little dots is, in fact, a rhinestone stud. She's ridiculously happy with it, and if I had been looking to re-do the kids' bathroom this weekend as well, I'm certain she would have cheerfully picked the sequin-covered shower curtain to go with it.