And tonight was not better than yesterday.

I don't think I've mentioned this before (because why would I?) but Axel in Security has to have a break every night so he can take a poop, usually around 12:15, but tonight it was about 12:20 or 12:30, and oh my goodness, it takes him forever to poop!! WTH?? So tonight he’s on his poop break, and Maintenance was standing by with a crazy ER patient, so I get a call from one of the alarm companies, and BTW, I hate them, because they are rude and not helpful. They asked if we have an emergency situation? And I said not that I’m aware of, I don’t have any alarms going off here, and then they asked for the passcode. I said, "What building are you calling about?" And instead of telling me, she asks me again for the passcode.

I don’t know the passcode - I think it’s a certain number, but I wasn’t sure - so I put her on hold and called Security, who is still in the bathroom and can’t tell me the passcode. What?? So I go back to the alarm company call and said Security isn’t available, and she asks for the passcode again, and I said I don’t have it, and she asked for my name, and I told her and she said, “You don’t have the passcode,” and hung up!

So then Security called me on the phone, and I told him she hung up, and he said the passcode is a certain number and I said, "Why didn’t you tell me that before?" And he says because the ER admitting area has a police band radio, and the security radio can be heard over it, and he didn’t want anyone to hear the passcode and he didn’t have his phone with him. Fine, he didn’t take his cellphone to the bathroom with him? I hate him.

THEN he hears a message coming over his radio, and he listens and laughs and says the alarm company is sending the police to the building that had the alarm and they said over the radio that Audrey didn’t know the passcode. Can you believe that?

So I wrote it down on my log sheet, and as I was writing it all down, I got a call from someone else at the Alarm Company of the Damned to let me know they had called for the police to be dispatched to that building, and she called it by name and gave me the address, too, thanks, because they had an alarm and Audrey didn’t know the password. So now they can tell me what building it is?

Of course now Security is free to toddle over to that building to see what the problem is, because he has finished his nightly poo, and he asks me to let Maintenance know he will have to continue standing by in the ER with the patient until Security gets back. Haha, I’m sure John from Maintenance is having a great time up there. He was warned about the Poo Breaks when he started working midnights after Mike the Gossip King retired. The Gossip King used to be the one who always got the call to watch a patient in ER while Security took his breaks, which is why the entire hospital knows about the Poo Breaks and snickers about them behind Axel's back.

As soon as I hung up from the Alarm Company call, I got a call from another alarm monitoring system to let me know that they have a Supervisory Signal at another one of the network buildings. They get those on a regular basis, but I haven’t cracked the code of that schedule yet. No one seems to know what a Supervisory Signal is, either. I have asked the alarm people, security, and maintenance, and no one knows, so now when I get one, I write it on my log and don’t even bother to report it to anyone.

And I am not kidding, as soon as I finished writing that call on my log, I got a call from the same drunk woman who has called me every night starting at the night before Christmas Eve, and she asks about getting admitted to the detox program. This has happened every night, and every night I give her the information that we do not admit anyone to the program at night and she needs to call in the daytime, and that if she is sick she can go to the ER and they will keep her there until she can be admitted in the morning. We have done this dance every night!! I am so sick of it! So I go over it again and this time she wants to know if we have any available beds, so I put her on hold and call the night nursing supervisor, who has also spoken to her, one night last week, and she looks it up and says no we don’t have any available bed for her in the detox unit. I told the caller that, and she said okay and waited, and I didn’t say anything else and finally she said thanks and hung up.

Can you see why a person might feel a bit frazzled?

Also, Avatar was pretty but NOT epic, like Lucas said on Facebook, so he was wrong and now I am looking forward to seeing Sherlock Holmes. Probably this weekend.

Why I hate my life today.

It rained all day on Christmas Eve day, and most of Christmas Day, too, and the bathroom ceiling that has not leaked since I had the roof re-shingled two years ago started leaking again. I feel so ghetto now. It's like living in a tenement.

The basement leaked, too, but that is a local phenomenon, where everyone in town gets water in their basement, just some more than others. So I was already sad about the bathroom ceiling leakage, and the pathetic bowls and towels that we had to set in strategic places on the floor to catch the water, and the cats were dodging the drops to eat from their bowls, and then I went down to the basement to do the laundry and slipped in the water on the floor and landed on my knee! Ow sweetie! Ow dahling! Oh, the humanity.

Ironically, today is the day when the handyman dropped off the quote for the job of replacing the ruined bathroom ceiling, because a month ago I asked him to come look at it, thinking that after two years (maybe it's only one year, I can't remember when we had it done) of not leaking we were home free and could get the ceiling repaired. So yeah, that won't be happening for a while yet.

Kim was gone when I got up and Rich said she had gone to lunch with Sando and then they were going somewhere else, but he forgot where. I texted her and it turned out that the Somewhere Else was Sando's house, because he had a new game they wanted to play. Later she texted me and said that she and Sando, Divad, and Sando's little brother, Sando Jr, were all just sitting in his basement, each of them doing something by themselves on their laptops. Sounds like a fun party, doesn't it?

I went out with RA to mail packages at the post office, and I was pretty cranky, mostly about the bathroom ceiling. I told her that Rich was accusing me of having PMS, and she said he might be right about that. Then she gave me some chocolate, so that helped, but maybe it was just to shut me up.

Well THAT'S over!

The most fun I had this weekend was playing Euchre on Christmas Eve with Rich's parents. Rachel was my partner in the first game, and Kim was my partner for the second, and it was so much fun! I love Euchre and I hardly ever have anyone to play with, so it was a treat for me.

The second most fun thing we did was this morning when we all watched the DVD Ash put together of some family home movies! There were movies from Christmas 1989 and 1994, and the kids were so cute! Some of the other movies are of Kim getting a bath when she was a fairly new baby, and one that Rachel and Scott made themselves in which Scott demonstrates his talent at making armpit noises.

This is the first year in a long time that we didn't watch A Christmas Story all day on TV, because we don't have cable! This is also the first time I've missed cable!

I love my red laptop!

Okay, so Kim got home Thursday night at 11, and Rich was sleeping, so I helped her bring her bags in from the car. She had several bags, and the biggest one is a monster! Of course that one is the one I dropped on my ankle, and it's still sore!

Friday morning I was going out to breakfast with RA, and Kim heard me talking about it, because even when she is asleep, the phrase "go out to breakfast" penetrates her consciousness, and she murmured, "Are you going out for breakfast?" I told her she could go to if she got up right now and got dressed, and then I went into her room and shook out the clothes she had taken off the night before and told her to put them back on.

After breakfast we went to W@lmart because RA needed to get a few things for the little party she was planning for Sunday afternoon, and I bought Paper Mario for the Wii for Kim, and she has been playing it almost constantly since then.

While Kim plays Paper Mario, I have been knitting on a sweater for Soren. It's made of a bluey-purple tweedy wool, with a letter S on the front. The S is knitted in intarsia, and I hate intarsia, but I wanted to make this sweater - it's a Weasley Sweater! So I sat there last night and worked on it until that stinking S was finished! When the sweater is sewn together and blocked, I'll post a picture of it, because it does look kind of good.

It's been a little strange having Kim home playing video games and not having Sando parked on the couch with his laptop, but he's out of town this weekend. He'll be back tomorrow, and I'm ready for him! I've got cinnamon rolls to bake, frozen pizzas, and Mountain Dew!

Oh, I almost forgot this, but in between video games, Kim is working on a laptop exchange. She has so much crap important stuff stored on her laptop that there isn't enough memory for her to play Guild Wars properly, and she said she wanted to try playing it on my laptop, to see if it would run better.

My laptop has hardly anything on it, since I mostly use it just for checking Facebook and watching TV shows in bed, so Guild Wars ran beautifully on it, and Rich says my laptop also has more memory because it is newer, so Kim is trading laptops with me - again.

Remember last Christmas when we did the big laptop switch? Rachel's was old, mine was new, and Kim's was only a year old, so Kim gave hers to Rachel, I gave mine to Kim, and Rachel gave me her old one, since I didn't really need one (see above). Well, a few months later, Rich got another new one for me when there was a big sale, and that's the one Kim is getting now. I don't mind, I'm getting my cool red laptop back!

So here at the House of Laptops, Kim has borrowed an external hard drive from Rich's office, and she's using it to move programs from one computer to the other. She should be done tonight, so we can shut down that operation, which is set up on the couch and the folding table in the living room.

This afternoon I went to the party at RA's house, and I took Kim with me just to ride along, and eat cookies. It was a good thing Kim went, because RA wasn't quite done setting things up, so Kim made a couple of trips to the basement and also, climbed on a chair to light candles, so she earned her cookies. I didn't plan to stay long, which is another reason why I took Kim, so that when I was ready to leave, I could say that we had to go, because Kim had a 'thing'. On the way home, Kim was speculating on what the 'thing' could be, in case anyone asked her about it later. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

In which Finals are finished.

I haven't slept much the last couple of days, so I'm getting pretty tired. This morning about 4 a.m., I could hardly keep my eyes open at work, and then I went to breakfast with Diane from the lab, and by the time I got home, I was sleepy, so instead of farming, I went straight to bed.

I was almost asleep when suddenly I was awake again, and I tossed and turned, and fought with my pillow, and then the doorbell rang. I waited a minute, but Rich didn't go downstairs to answer it, and I wasn't dressed for answering the door, so I had to get up and go call up to the office to Rich and tell him the doorbell rang.

Rich said he couldn't hear the doorbell from his office, and that's why he didn't answer it. He went downstairs and I went back to bed, and I could hear voices downstairs, and then Rich stopped in on his way back upstairs to tell me that one of the kids from church, a boy about Kim's age, had locked himself out of his apartment, which is three or four blocks away, and walked over to our house so he'd have someplace warm to wait until his roommate got back at noon. It was -3, so he'd had a cold walk to our house!

I slept after that, but I kept waking up and checking the time, and finally I got up at 1:30. The kid was gone by then, and Rich said he'd just slept on the couch all morning.

I went out with RA, but when I'm tired, my tolerance goes down and I can't listen to babbling, so I was happy to get back home again. I worked on my farm, and Kim's, and I chatted with Kim over the internets about her day.

Kim was feeling harrassed and overworked, but she was getting things done! When I talked to her later, she had turned in some things and was feeling better about her life. She's getting past the end of semester panicking, and just starting the worry about grades, which will peak during the next week, as she has time to sit and wonder and chew her nails over whether she is going to get the As and Bs that she is expecting, or if she will be sideswiped by an unexpected C. I don't think Kim has ever gotten a C, but she worries about the possibility and fears them like other people fear werewolves or spiders.

I tried to sleep before I came to work tonight, but that didn't really happen either, so here I am, and I'm planning to take some Tylenol PM in the morning, and to sleep well tomorrow. Kim will be home in the evening, so I'll have plenty of time to put clean sheets on her bed and make a Spanish Omelet to welcome her.

In which Evil goes back in the freezer.

This is a copy of the study schedule that Rachel made for Kim, to help Kim get through finals week. I thought it was funny, so I'm sharing it here:

Kim's Finals Week Plan

Tonight:

*Review poetry notes and put concepts in your journal.

*Put journal in the freezer so you don't have to think about it anymore and go to bed at midnight.

Tuesday:

*Counseling appointment in the morning, take your notebook with you so you can work on the prologue on the bus and anytime you have down time.

*Scheduled appointment with group. You can totally get the Chinese video finished, edited and done before your group meeting is over. Get it uploaded before going back to your apartment so you don't have to think about it anymore.

*Finishing typing up your story and revising once the Chinese thing is finished and you're back home. You've been working on it during the day, so it's not going to be too bad. I would even send it to Mom once the revisions are made so she can proof-read and you don't have to think about it.

*Before going to bed, take your journal out of the freezer. Revel in the lovely coldness of the notebook and review your notes for 15-30 min. before bed. Don't do it for longer than this. Then put your notebook back in the freezer and go to bed.

*If you have some extra time, do some of your Chinese take-home test. Just answer the easy questions, the ones you can do without thinking, so you can feel good that you know what your talking about. Any hard ones, leave for Wednesday.

Wednesday:

*15-30 min. before poetry exam, review journal one more time. Keep those notes in the freezer until absolutely the last minute. That way when your reviewing they might still be cold. It will be lovely.

*Finish up your Chinese take-home test. Since you did the easy problems yesterday you won't have as much to deal with and you can feel more in control. Get that turned in.

*Mom should have sent the proof-read copy of your story to your email. Read it one more time and send it to your teacher. Woot! One more thing done.

*Curl up on the couch with some hot cocoa and start reviewing your Chinese articles. Do you really need 50? I mean, come on. It's just a final. Either way. Decide the articles that you are actually going to use, put them in the freezer before bed and you can finish up the project in the morning.

Thursday:

*Alright, you've made it. Last thing to do. Work on your Chinese project and get it finished up. You already made some headway yesterday, so it's not going to be too bad. Turn it in.

*Guess what? Now you're done!! You get to come home. Go get some gas in your car. Get some McDonald's. Mom and I will make sure you have money in your account for both. Get a shake to drink on the way home!! You totally get to relax when you get home. It's going to be lovely. Use the Garmin on the drive back.

You can totally do this Kim! If you start panicking, give me a call. I will have my phone with me at work and you know Mom will be available too. We've totally got your back!!

Love you smalls,
Rachel

PS. If I missed anything, let me know. Send me an email and I'll work it into your schedule. And don't forget the importance of putting things in the freezer. Some things just need to chill.

I am choosing to be happy.

I've been in a crabby mood all day, at least I have been since RA suddenly started getting sick after church, by which I mean she is showing symptoms that her cellulitis might be back. That is, according to her husband, and if he is wrong, and she just has a little virus, well then I am sorry for the mean things I said to many people today about her bad medication habits.

RA's husband told me that she stopped taking her antibiotic, and now that she thinks her infection is coming back, she thinks maybe she should take the rest of the pills she had left when she decided she didn't need to take them anymore. I can't express my fury at hearing that, although I have told several people today how mad that makes me, that she is so stupid that even after we have talked (more than once) about why it's a bad thing to stop taking your antibiotics before you finish all of them - super virus, anyone? - so I just can't talk about it anymore. Just know that I am angry.

So moving on from the topic of Frustrating Friends, the good news is that Karin had her new baby and I could not be happier for her! She was a big baby, too, for a first one - she weighed 8 lbs! Good job, Karin!

In other news, I owe thanks to Diana for taking care of my farm tonight. I talked to her on the phone in the afternoon, mostly to rant about the previously mentioned problem with RA, and while I was talking to her I was checking my farm. My strawberries were almost ready to harvest but I was so sleepy! I needed to get a nap before work, and Diana said she would check them later and take care of them if I didn't. When I woke up tonight, I looked at my farm, and she had harvested the strawberries and planted something else! Thanks, Diana!

This is finals week for Kim, and then she'll be home Thursday evening to sit on our couch and play video games to entertain me! Haha, that's what I wish would happen, but the truth is that she will sit on the couch perusing her favorite websites on her laptop and ignore me.

What I'm knitting tonight:

I'm making a cowl for Joe of Joe and Rondee, who needs a face-protector while he's working, and scarves just won't stay up over his face the way he wants them to. It's an easy, soothing project for someone who is on her last nerve and has had a constant headache for a week, so tonight I'm going to just knit and try to be zen.

Went to a baby shower!

Not that I have anything interesting to write about, I just have a few minutes to kill while I wait for my crops to be ready to harvest in Farmville.

Last night I went to a baby shower for Rachel given by the nurses she works with. She received a massive amount of cute pink baby clothes! After the shower, one of the nurses brought in three bags full of cute pink baby clothes that her girls wore when they were babies, so yeah, Rachel has plenty of clothes for the baby now.

The house where the shower was held was lovely, and the food was very good, too. ALso there was a lot of hospital gossip, and what's not to like about that?

Rich stayed home with the cats and watched golf or something on TV. I was glad to get away for a while. I thought there was nothing to watch on TV when we had cable, but now there is really nothing to watch! I think we are going to need to get cable back, because I miss the Food Network.

What I'm knitting today: A loose-fitting hat for Kim, from a pattern that I got free with the yarn. The yarn is a lovely soft wool called Taos that I ordered from Patternworks, because I liked the hat pattern.

What I'm reading today: I'm re-reading some books on my Kindle. Nothing very exciting. Just finished One Fifth Avenue, and started Beverly Hills Adjacent.

There's just not a lot happening here. Kim will be around next week, maybe I'll have something to write about then.

Wildlife!

Saturday when I went outside to go shopping with RA, there were these tracks in the tiny amount of snow on the front steps:



The tracks led up to the pumpkin that has been sitting on the top step since Halloween. We didn't carve the pumpkin, we just put it out on the porch. And left it there for a month. Because that is how we roll.



When I got home I checked the pumpkin again, and the hole was bigger, with more seeds and stuff pulled out. It was pretty much hollow inside. Then on Sunday I went with RA to take a Poinsettia to an old dear in the ward who had surgery, and when I told the old dear about it, she offered me the pumpkin that was still sitting on her porch!

I took her pumpkin home and replaced my now-empty pumpkin with the new one, and it's almost hollow now.

In which I am only writing to entertain my cousin.

I slept the entire day on Monday. I didn't wake up until 4:30 in the afternoon, and it was so dark in my bedroom that I was confused at first, and I couldn't remember what day it was, or if it was day or night.

I could hear Rachel upstairs talking to Rich, but I didn't go up there. I staggered downstairs and got a Diet Pepsi to wake up with, because I felt so groggy. By the time Rachel came downstairs, I was a little more awake, and when she said she needed to go out to pick up something at Rondee's, I got dressed and went with her.

Hayden, who is about 2, was happy to see us, and he showed me their Christmas tree, and let me read to him. He even made a monkey noise for me! He's so cute!

I don't even know what Rachel was picking up from Rondee, because I just wasn't paying attention. I still needed to wake up, I think. We went to the store so I could buy spaghetti noodles, and then Rachel dropped me off at home again. I wasn't ready to cook, so it was good that Rachel talked me into buying some roast chicken at the grocery store! It smelled great!

So Rich and I ate roast chicken, and then I cooked the carbonara during the commercials of my favorite show, The Big Bang Theory.

Rich is suppposed to read Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree at the ward Christmas party this week, but we can't find our copy. We spent more time looking for it tonight, and then Rachel said she could put it on hold and Barnes and Noble, so she and Ash are going to pick up a copy tomorrow at the mall. Yay!

Other than that, nothing of interest is going on here. There has been talk of a big snow that is getting everyone all worked up, but I'm not sure I believe in it. RA told me that the Weather Channel has a reporter in place in Chicago, waiting for the blizzard, but that it isn't Jim Cantore. Well, if the Weather Channel didn't even send their A team, can we expect much at all? I don't think so. Everyone needs to calm down.

Chlorine, the old dear who is working the day shift on the switchboard a couple of mornings a week until Barb comes back from her most recent surgery (and by the way, Barb must be about a bionic woman by now, with all the surgery she's had!), was whining Monday morning about how if we got all that snow, she might not be able to come to work, because she has to drive 12 miles to get here! 12 miles? Please. I couldn't even think of a snarky response to that, it was so ridiculous.

I know I still haven't put up the (very few) Thanksgiving pictures I took, and I also have some pictures of my Halloween pumpkin to show, so I'll try to get those uploaded tomorrow.

I'd rather knit than sleep.

I went to sleep last night around 11, because I was falling asleep sitting up in bed reading a book on my Kindle and knitting on the cutest little vest for Soren! Seriously, it is so cute, and I feel very clever for turning into something I can knit in the round, instead of knitting the pieces flat and then seaming them up.

I woke up at 3:30, because my sleeping is all upside down like always, and I opened up my book and started knitting on the vest again, because it's all I want to do! Now I'm getting sleepy again, but instead of sleeping, I just want to get in bed and read while I knit on that vest some more!

There were going to be pictures...

By Jenna's request, I took pictures at Thanksgiving, and then yesterday I got two beautifully lettered tiles in the mail from Beck, and I was going to take pictures of them to make a lovely photo-filled entry, just like Jesse always does, but damn! Where is my camera?

I've looked in the usual places, and I found the camera's case lying on the floor in a pile of cat hair, but I still hadn't seen my camera, and was starting to wonder if Kim maybe took it to pawn for gas money, and then as I was leaving the house tonight, I saw it on the shelf by Lord Woo Fak-Fak! So there will be pictures tomorrow.

So nothing much is going on this week. Except that yesterday Rich took all of his bottles of shampoo rejects, the ones that I give him when people leave them behind after a visit, or I try something new because I like the bottle, but then I don't like it, and so he has several bottles of shampoo and conditioners, and not much hair to use them on, but anyway, he took his shampoos and moved back downstairs into the cat's bathroom. It's got all the mold cleaned up and the mold-killing paint is painted over the formerly moldy areas and now it just needs a coat of regular paint to finish it up. I'm sure we'll get that done. Sometime. Soon. (I wonder when Diana is coming to visit again?)

What with all of the Thanksgiving holiday being over and the company gone, our house seems quiet and empty, with only the sound of Patsy's sneezes echoing through the empty rooms. I'm not sure why Patsy is sneezing so much; he doesn't have any symptoms of a cold, like runny eyes or nose, and he had an allergy shot last week, but he keeps sneezing! Maybe he's allergic to that afghan he is always sleeping on, or maybe it's an allergy to dust, in which case he is living in the wrong house! We're keeping an eye on him, so don't please don't send me worried emails. Patsy is fine. Just sneezy.

Monday

Kim wanted to get back to school in time to go to church in her ward on Sunday. Her ward doesn't meet until 1:30 in the afternoon, so she asked Rich to wake her up at 6:30 in the morning, and she took a Tylenol PM the night before so she would go to sleep early. (Early is before midnight, since she has been staying up progressively later every night of this vacation! She never went to bed before 3!)

So she packed her stuff Saturday night while she was waiting for the T. PM to take effect, and when I got home from work at 7 on Sunday morning, she was almost ready to leave. She brought her big suitcase down from her room, and we looked around the living room to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything, and she got her GPS from my car, and then she was ready to go.

We carried her laptop, her big suitcase, her big purse and a smaller tote bag out to the car, and I packed a snack bag for her with all of the leftover half-bags of chips and cheese popcorn that she and her friends were eating all week. I put in two cans of Mountain Dew to help wake her up, too. She said she'd stop at McD's for breakfast and then she left...sniff...

I went to the den and sat in front of my computer for a while - I had to read my emails and do my farming - and an hour or so later I went upstairs to bed. I glanced into Kim's room to see how big a mess she left behind, and eek! She forgot her smaller bag of grooming essentials! I glanced at the contents and right on top were her glasses and her retainer! Oh no!

I didn't call Kim to tell her she'd forgotten anything, because she'd been on the road for more than an hour already, and it was too late for her to come back for her bag. I just went to bed.

Kim called last night, after she got home from church, and she was in a very pissy mood, because she had discovered she didn't have her grooming bag. I promised to mail her glasses and retainer on Monday, and told her to go to the store to buy some solution for her contacts, and a toothbrush. She wasn't thrilled, but she did it.

So today I went to the post office with RA, who is finally back from her travels - she's been gone for most of October, and when she was home, she was sick, and then she left again!

I went up to the counter with my little Priority Mail box, instead of using the Magic Mailing Machine (I love that thing!), because I wanted to get some insurance on the package, since her glasses and retainer would be expensive to replace if the box got lost in the mail. I told the postal clerk that it was some stuff my daughter left behind when she went back to college, and he said I was the first person today to come in to mail something to a kid who had forgotten it. He said usually on a Monday they get at least three parents mailing stuff that got left behind by their college kids! Who knew?

The only other thing that happened today was that the boys who borrowed our GPS and left one of their cars at our house while they went out of town, came back and picked up the car. They gave back my Garmin and said they have been calling her Nora. That's funny! It gives you directions in a woman's voice with a British accent, and apparently they found it charming. (Kim's Garmin is set to give you directions in Chinese. Not very useful, in my opinion, but she can see where to go by looking at the map on the little screen.)

So I guess Thanksgiving is really over now. All of our guests and their cars have gone, and Rich and I are alone with the cats again. I am so tired of turkey, too. Wow, I never thought I'd say that!

In which the population of our house is decreasing.

My sleep schedule is completely upside down after the last two days, where I did not sleep in the morning, but stayed up until after noon, and slept until time to go to work. I'm sure things will get back to normal this week.

Radar left this morning, after he and Kim stayed up until about 5 a.m.! She was working on her Nanowrimo novel, and he was playing his computer game. They have stayed up later and later each night, but this was the latest night for them. They were both really dragging when they had to get up at 9, and Rich drove them to the airport, since Kim was not coherent enough to get them there safely. Rich reported later that they got Radar checked in okay, and then Rich bought them chili dogs for breakfast at the cafe in the airport.

I was awake all morning but with the help of two Tylenol PM, I was asleep by the time they got back. I woke up around 6 and Rich said Kim had gone to dinner with Rachel. They went to the Chinese place, but they didn't bring back food for anyone's mother. I'm getting pretty tired of turkey leftovers!

Kim wants to be back in time for church in her student branch tomorrow, so she went to bed early, thanks to our family friend, Tylenol PM, and she told Rich to wake her up at 6.

It was nice having everyone around for the holiday. Kim would like to stay a little longer, but she will be back in three weeks for her Christmas break. Radar was a pretty easy houseguest, who spent all his time sitting on the couch playing a computer game, and Kim sat at the other end of the couch, writing her novel on her laptop.

Kim is almost done with her novel, and did I mention that Sando finished his? He's not done with his story, but he met the goal of 50,000 words! I've already read what he wrote and it's an entertaining story, but he needs to write the ending!

In which we make brine, twice.

When I got up today, Kim and Radar were gone and had left a note saying that they went to Rachel's and were going to a movie later. Rich was up in his office, so I had the house to myself for a little while.

I didn't use the time to take a luxurious bubble bath or anything, I did some laundry and cleaned toilets, but I would rather do menial jobs when no one is around, so it was good.

Kim had made a Spanish Omelet and left some for me, and there was coconut pie to go with it! She had also left a big mess in the kitchen, but luckily, cleaning up the kitchen is not my job. I had put a roast in the crockpot when I got home from work in the morning, and that was still simmering.

I tried to farm, but Farmville has been acting quirky this week, which is making me lose my enthusiasm for playing it. While I was looking for entertainment on the internets, Rich wandered by and asked if I wanted to go with him to get the oil changed in his car, and get some dinner somewhere. Well, yeah!

So we went out and got the oil changed, and drove through Sonic to get BLTs. We just needed something light because we were planning to eat the pot roast later.

The kids came back from the movie about the time we were done eating, and they said they saw the new Christmas Carol movie and it was awesome! Kim was tired and she went upstairs to lay down for a while, and Radar stayed downstairs with me and started cooking the brine for the turkey. I love it when kids cook while I supervise!

So I sat at the kitchen table and asked him nosy questions about his family and and he made the brine, which had to be divided up in two big pots because it makes a lot. Then the brine had to sit on the stove and cool to room temperature, so we left it sitting and I went back to try farming again, and he sat down with his video game.

When Kim came downstairs, she said that Rachel and Ash were coming over to watch a funny version of Twilight, and Rich sat down to watch it with them. He had been in the kitchen cleaning up, and I asked him what he did with the big pots of broth on the stove, and instead of saying he left them sitting, he said he dumped them, not knowing what they were! EEK!

So Rachel and I went back to the kitchen and made brine again! I wasn't interested in watching the movie, and neither was she, so we didn't really care. We made brine, we ate chocolates, and then we knitted. It was all very pleasant.

So I didn't get a nap before work tonight, but that's okay. I've got tomorrow night off, and I'll catch up then. When I get home in the morning, I'll make the stuffing for the turkey and Rich will roast it while I'm sleeping. I had a plan to make extra stuffing, too, since there is never enough with Kim keeping the stuffing bowl next to her and growling at anyone who wants some. I don't know if that will happen though. If Rachel remembers to make a pan of cornbread tonight, I can use it for the extra stuffing tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll just have to fight Kim for it like we always do.

It's been raining all day, and I got wet!

I haven't been cooking a lot lately, and suddenly I am out of everything! I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner, and Radar expressed an interest in Curried Chicken (an excellent choice!), but I knew I needed a can of tomatoes for that.

Kim wanted to go to W@lmart, as she needed some new earphones for her mp3 player, so we went, trudging through the rain, which was just starting when we got there. We both got earphones, because when Kim's break, she 'borrows' mine and then I don't have any.

It was raining slightly harder on the way home, but that was no big deal. I went to the kitchen to start cooking and I was a bit surprised to see that I was out of curry paste! I always have curry paste! Well, there was a jar of Thai green curry paste, but it wasn't the kind I needed for dinner.

Okay, I'm flexible, no problem, I'll make chicken noodle soup. I started browning the chicken in a pot on the stove, and then went to gather up the vegetables I needed to chop, and - hey! No carrots? Great, I can leave out the carrots. I pulled out the celery, saw a lone zucchini, and thought I would use that instead of carrots, but on closer inspection, no. It was a little too old, and showing its age in unpleasant ways. There was half a cabbage - yeah, that would be okay, wait, no, also too old to use, and when I looked at the celery? OMG, very nasty.

Somebody needed to go back to the store. You know, this is what an idiot I am, I just realized I should have called for a pizza. I didn't think of that at the time, because I was focused on Making Chicken Soup.

So, I whined a little, but the people who were playing video games on their laptops ignored my suffering, and I finally just went out by myself. To the store. In the now pouring rain.

In the parking lot I recognized Shelley's car, so when I got inside the store I tried calling her to see where she was! I thought it would be fun to shop together, but she didn't answer. I looked for curry paste, but I was in the smaller grocery store near my house, and they don't carry anything that exotic. So it was on to the vegetable aisle.

I tried Shelley again, but still no answer. As I was leaving the store, I saw her coming in, and she said she'd been sitting in her car talking to her son on her cell phone. Oh well.

Back home and I had the vegetables all chopped and ready to go in the pot with the chicken, to sweat them for five minutes. I was reaching for the lid when the doorbell rang.

It was my neighbor, bringing over a coconut pie! I love her coconut pie! I danced around and showed it to everyone before I put it in the fridge and then I sat down to my computer to read my email, and to call Rich's parents to thank them for the big box of Sees chocolates they sent!

Sadly, the doorbell interruption distracted me from finding the lid, so while I was on the phone, the vegetables did not sweat, they scorched, and I had to convince everyone that the soup was still good, it was just a nice manly brown. I went upstairs and took a nap after that, and I don't know if anyone ate any or not. When I woke up, Rich had already done the dishes and put the food away.

So here I am at work, and I have plans to make a roast in the crockpot tomorrow, which is very much foolproof, so we will have an unscorched dinner.

In which a car tire is heavier than I thought it would be.

When I woke up today, I knew there were a few things I needed to get done, and luckily, my enabler lovely assistant, RA, is back in town!

I called her to see what her plans were for the afternoon, and she said she needed to go to W@lmart, and would be over to pick me up in a few minutes! Perfect!

Kim ran to take a shower so she could go with us, but after her shower, she remembered Patsy the cat's vet appointment, and she volunteered to take the cat in while I went with RA to shop and take care of repairing Kim's tire.

Kim got the tire out of the back of her car, and when RA arrived, I picked it up to put it in her trunk, and oh my goodness! Tires are heavy! Who knew? I don't think I've ever lifted one before! And also? They are dirty! So I hauled it over to the trunk of RA's car and hoisted it in, and then got in the car and used some hand-wipes to clean the rubbery filth off of my hands. (There was tire filth on my shirt, too, but it was just a shirt I'd picked up from the floor of my room to put on when I got up, so it was no big deal. It didn't look terrible, and I put it in the laundry when we got home.)

Our first stop was at W@lmart's tire department, where a strange little man took my information and then waddled out to the car to look at the tire. I followed him back in to look up the tire in his, uh, tire book? He said they don't have any of those tires. Okay then.

So we took our tire to F@rm and Fleet, which is where I usually go for tires, not that I've had to do it very often, and they had the tire we needed, so I left it there. They said they'd call when it was ready.

RA and I went back to W@lmart, and we did our shopping, mine for feeding people all week, and hers for traveling snacks, because she and her husband are driving twelve hours to spend the holiday with their daughters, who both live in Kansas now.

Kim called when we were leaving the store, and said the vet gave Patsy a shot for his allergies, and shaved a little more fur away from the ugly bare spot he has licked on his back, above his tail. He told Kim to put Neosporin on the sore spot and to keep him from licking at it.

When I got home, Kim was home, and was just letting the cat out of the carrier. He was not happy, having been submitted to many indignities that morning, and he wanted to lick his bare spot. Kim followed him around, trying to put the ointment on his back, but he just kept licking it off.

Kim got on the internet and found a suggestion for preventing the lickage: you take a baby's t-shirt and put it on the cat upside down - the cat's hind legs through the armholes and his tail through the neckhole, and it covers his back so he can't lick!

It sounded like a good idea, so Kim and I went to K-m@rt, thinking to avoid the crowds, because there are always less people at K-m@rt. Kim talked to her friend Radar on her phone while I combed the racks, looking for the right size t-shirt for a fat, cranky cat. I decided to get him the size for a baby weighing 8-13 lbs, since Patsy is in that weight area too.

When we got home, Kim grabbed the cat and we stuffed him into the upside-down t-shirt. It was pretty funny. He ran off as soon as Kim put him down, and a couple of minutes later, she found the t-shirt, abandoned, on the floor of the dining room. So from this we learn that cats do not like to wear a humiliating piece of clothing, and if you leave them alone, they will eventually lay down on 'their' afghan on the couch and go to sleep. While they are sleeping, they don't lick.

I was so sleepy by that time, that Kim offered to sit on the bed with the laptop and work on her story while I napped. Yay! I love it when people keep me company while I sleep! She worked on her story for over two hours, and when I woke up, she was just finishing up with today's word count. She pulled all of her story parts together into one document tonight, and she's got over 30,000 words! She needs to write about 3,000 words a day until the end of the month to reach 50,000, but she thinks she can do it.

While I was sleeping, Rich took the call from F&F, letting him know the tire was fixed, so he took Kim's car and went to get the new tire put on. So Kim is ready to make the drive to the airport to pick up her friend tomorrow. She's not going to the airport in Chicago, she's only going as far as the airport in Rockford.

We're thawing our turkey in the fridge tonight, so it will be thawed by Thursday. Rachel bought supplies for the pie-making, and I think I've got everything else we need, so it all looks good for the rest of the week. We're ready!

Night of Writing Dangerously.

This day turned out to be busier than expected after a dull weekend. It was the Primary presentation at church today, so that was fun and entertaining.

Kim stayed up late writing her novel and watching Sando play Left for Dead 2 (now with more slaughter!), so it was hard to get her out of bed and functioning this morning, and after church we both needed a nap.

Rachel came over at 4 and woke us up! She said Ash has been sick and she was leaving him home to sleep, and she came to our house so their place would be quiet. She sat in the living room and played Animal Crossing to entertain me while I knitted! It was great!

Sando picked up Kim to go get a burger at Sonic because she has never eaten there. It opened after she left for college in the Fall. They were planning to come back to our house to work on their Nanowrimo novels after they ate.

Then Rondee called and said that Joe was sleeping and she wanted to take the baby out of the house for a while so he wouldn't disturb his dad. She wondered if they could come to our house? Their little boy is the cutest thing, and he is no trouble at all. He walked around looking at everything, Rachel kept playing AC, and we all talked, mostly about the Primary presentation, because Rondee is the music leader in the Primary.

Rondee stayed for an hour or so, and then as she was leaving, Kim and Sando came home, and settled in on the couch to write. They declared that they were having a Night of Writing Dangerously, and they were going to sit there and write until they each finished 5,000 words!

Rachel went on home, Rich came home from an evening meeting, and I played Animal Crossing to entertain them while they wrote. They said AC was okay because it wasn't distracting, but it was just something there for company. They wrote and wrote, and just got up to get another Mountain Dew, or for a potty break. They said they were going to write 5,000 words before midnight, and when I came to work at 10:30, they were almost done!

Here they are:



They are amazing! They have worked so hard on this! This is their fourth attempt, and it's the first time that Sando has come this close to finishing! He's going to do it! He's only got 5,000 words to go after tonight, to reach his goal of 50,000! Kim finished a 50,000 word novel the first year they participated, but has had too much homework the last two years, and had to drop out. She's behind Sando right now, but she should be able to finish by the end of the month. I am so impressed by their determination!

If you can't be a good example, you can serve as a horrible warning.

Kim is home and the cats could not be happier to have someone to sleep with. They aren't really interested in sleeping on our bed anymore, but when Kim is home they always sleep on her bed. When she is gone, they sleep 23 hours a day - Patsy sleeps on the couch (on Grandma's afghan, haha!), and Zorro sleeps on the black rocker/game chair that sits low to the floor.

Lately Rich and Zorro are in competition for that chair, because Rich likes to sit in it too, and if he gets to it first, Zorro prowls around it meaningfully, hoping Rich will leave, and when Rich doesn't leave the chair, Zorro sits on his lap.

Just tonight Rich got the hint - he sat down in the chair to watch TV, and asked me why Zorro was nudging him and staring at him, and then the lightbulb went on! "I'm sitting in his chair, aren't I?" Yes, and he would appreciate if you would get out of it!

I called RA to see how she was doing tonight, after we had gone out in the car to do a couple of errands in the afternoon and her cellulitis leg was getting sore and swollen again. She said she had been doing too much at home, and it was swelling up again, but she needed to go to an activity at church, so she was getting dressed to go out.

I told her to stay home and rest, but no, she had to go because she was in charge of the soup or something like that. Rich heard me on the phone with her, and suddenly remembered that he was supposed to be there, too, so I put on my shoes and went with him, to keep him company.

It was a lecture about making wills and planning for when you are old and in the nursing home, and I could not have been less interested. The dinner smelled good, but we had already eaten, so I just knitted and talked to people during that portion of the evening.

There were three speakers, and the first one was going on and on about setting up a plan for who would take care of your children if you died suddenly. I looked around the room (which was overheated, by the way), and estimated the average age of the audience was about 70, and wondered why anyone thought we needed that information. That was when I started texting Diana for entertainment!

Me:

I'm bored in a meeting. Tell me a story.

Diana:


We went to dinner at BK so I could get the New Moon swag. TJ got me a 5 dollar gift card that says Team Jacob on it. I need help.

Me:

It's a sickness! I want one too!

Me:

It's hot in here and I'm so bored. I'm going to start chewing off my own foot like a wolf in a trap.

Diana:

You are the best of wives. Shouldn't the church be cold on a Friday night?

Me:

It's always hot in here, like Hell or Arizona.

Diana:

We are on our way to see Neil play some jazz fusion I think.

Me:

Fun for u. This meeting will never end. I will die here and my body will desicate in this heat like a mummy.

Shortly after that, the last speaker did finish, and we did actually get to leave the building and go home to find Kim waiting for us. She had arrived home and brought in her laptop so she could set it up and chat with her friends online. The rest of her bags were still in the car waiting for us to help carry them in.

We were all sitting in the living room later, talking and petting the cats - - Patsy's tail fur has been looking thinner and thinner, and tonight I noticed he has licked a bare patch on his back, just above his tail. It looks disgusting, so he is going to the vet in the morning. When our black cat, Chester was still alive, his fur got very thin on his hindquarters one winter, and when I took him to the vet, it was diagnosed as allergies, and he got a shot of an antihistimine and the cat got better right away. I think that might be Patsy's problem, too. I hope so, because he is looking very unkempt, and also, that bare patch is gross.

I woke up early again this morning, and I was laying in bed, thinking about how terrible RA looked when she arrived at that meeting last night, and I was thinking about how she never takes care of herself, and is so dumb about it. Then I had a shocking revelation - I do the same thing!

My doctor gave me that medicine to lower my cholesterol because it is high, and I barely remember to take it, and I don't do any of the things that I always advise other people to do when they are complaining about their high cholesterol! I read in Prevention magazine a few years ago that tests had shown that people who eat just 1/4 cup of beans from a can every day lowered their cholesterol in some short amount of time, and also, I used to eat oatmeal every night at work, and I haven't been doing that lately, either! Two easy things, that involve eating, my favorite activity, and I don't even do them! Oh noes! I am just as bad as RA!

When that epiphany struck, I got out of bed, and came downstairs to make some oatmeal, and vowed to change my ways! I'm going to take my cholesterol meds like I should, and eat oatmeal and beans every day. I love oatmeal! I put frozen berries in it and some cinnamon, and it is the perfect snack at work at 3 a.m.!

The study with the beans was done using canned pork and beans, because they are readily available, and most people like them, but you can eat any kind of beans. Only 1/4 of a cup was effective! That's not much at all! I like beans, so it's not a hardship to eat a small amount every day. I think I'll get some of those little cans of pork and beans with the pop-top, and keep those at work. We eat beans quite a bit, anyway. I make chili, and red beans and rice, and Rachel gave me a recipe for 5-bean soup that I used to make a lot. See, it's easy! I can do this! It'll change my life!

This journal entry was brought to you by the letter B, for Beans, and also for Boredom.

In which I have been up for hours!

I went to sleep about 10 last night, and woke up at 3:30 a.m.! You know what there is to do at 3:30? Not much!

I farmed a little, and watch an episode of Psych that I haven't seen before. Rachel is having a slow night at work, so she keeps writing emails to me, and I answer those. Kat was awake, too, so we texted back and forth for a while. Now I'm just waiting to go to breakfast with someone...anyone?

RA got back last night, but she was going to wait at the airport for the bus to Rockford, where her husband was picking her up at midnight, so I doubt that she will get up very early this morning. She probably didn't get to bed until 2 in the morning.

Rachel was babbling about breakfast, but in her last email she says she thinks she is too tired to go out this morning. Fine. See if I care. I'll just sit here and eat Cheez Its out of the box.

I don't have any plans for the weekend, except maybe some painting. Diana worked on the bathroom ceilings while she was here, so there is just a little left for me to finish, and I need to clean the bathrooms before we have company next week. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

In which there is a public service announcement.

Kim's Thanksgiving break starts on Friday, so if she leaves school right after her Friday class, she will be home in time for dinner! I guess I'd better cook something, huh?

Someone pointed out that I haven't updated my journal in a few days, but it's because nothing of interest is happening here. Twice I opened up a screen to write an update and both times I bored myself so much that I had to stop writing.

RA is still out of town, but she is out of the hospital now, and is flying home tomorrow, so yay! She left a message on my voicemail this morning that she is feeling much better. Sarah asked what cellulitis is, so for the edification of anyone who doesn't know (and I didn't know until RA started getting it), I will tell you.

Cellulitis is an infection under the skin, and it's caused by bacteria that are present on everyone's skin, but sometimes they just cause trouble, especially if you have one or more of the risk factors for it. I've known two people to have it, and both of them had it in the leg. The risk factors include: lowered immunity caused by something like diabetes, swelling of the ankles which impedes blood flow, and obesity. That is your medical update for today. Also, wash your hands and blow your nose after you are out in public, , that will decrease your risk of catching the H1N1 virus, or any other one. You're welcome.

Everybody is home now.

Rich and Rachel have been in Michigan visiting Grandma and Grandpa this weekend, and they left today to drive home. I was here with Diana, and this afternoon we drove to Milwaukee to get her on the plane back to Phoenix.

One of the things that is fun when Diana visits is that she is so excited about the wildlife, i.e. squirrels, and also the chipmunk that lives under our porch. On the drive to Milwaukee, you're on the highway but it's all through countryside ("It looks like a postcard!"), and we saw lots of wildlife.

There were birds sitting in rows on telephone wires ("we call those 'skittles'"), we saw big groups of ducks flying in V formation overhead, and I showed Diana what squirrels' nests look like in the bare trees ("Pay attention to the road, I don't want to die so you can see a squirrel's nest!").

I dropped her off (...sniff...) and drove home bravely by myself. I decided to go the scenic route on the way home, and I found myself driving through a somewhat less scenic area that looked like Appalachia, but then I saw a deer in a field eating corn, so that was cool!

Rich was home when I got there, laying on the couch watching the SyFy channel, so things are back to normal. Oh, except that RA was supposed to get back tonight from her visit to her insane sister, but she suddenly got cellulitis, and is in the hospital in Tucson instead. She says she should be discharged on Sunday and has a flight home scheduled for Thursday.

In which I weep for humanity.

Last night Diana helped me sort Grandma's clothes that Shirley sent home with me after Grandma died. I still had them in a suitcase in the basement, where they have been since the day I opened them up and they smelled like Grandma's powder, and I started crying and put them away again.

A couple of things we kept, and the rest we dropped off at Goodwill this morning. Two of the things we kept were a sweater that I knitted for Grandma about 15 years ago, and an afghan I made for her that is at least 20 years old, maybe a little more. Diana was sitting on the couch tonight watching TV, wearing the sweater and had the afghan over her lap, because she was cold! I was looking at the afghan, thinking about how old it was, and realized that Grandma must have really liked it, because of all the times she has moved from one state to another, and all the times she has left behind boxes of things she didn't care about, but she has kept that afghan through all the years.

After we sorted out the clothes, we went up to watch TV on my bed and I remembered that there was a box of Grandma's stuff in my closet, too! It was pictures in frames, and little tchotchkes and two bags of costume jewelry. So then we sat on my bed and sorted all that out. Diana draped one of Grandma's hankies over the top of the headboard and put some of the little statues and things up there, like a display, while we picked through broken watches and mismatched assorted junk. It was fun to look at the photos, and identify everyone in them.

So that's what we did last night, and this morning we went out for breakfast and dropped a big basket of clothes off at the Goodwill. We made another trip to Walmart for supplies, and then Diana bleached the mildewed ceiling in the highest cupboard in the cat's bathroom, the one I can't reach, even standing on a chair!

I made pumpkin pies this afternoon while Diana listed a couple of things on Craigslist for me, and then this afternoon it's just been playing Farmville, and watching TV.

Diana hasn't been able to watch any of her reality TV shows since she doesn't have cable, so tonight was her night to immerse herself and enjoy her shows. I watched one of them with her, but one was really all I could stand. It was called Tool Something, Festival? No, Academy! So Tool Academy was about girls with terrible boyfriends who brought them to be made over and re-educated at Tool Academy, and the show we saw was the last episode, so they were down to the last two contestants, who were both enormous losers, but you know what? Their girlfriends were just as dumb as they were. I hope they aren't going to reproduce, but I'm sure they will. I weep for humanity.

Wednesday

Today I am thankful that Diana just drove peacefully down the highway while I was having a fit trying to make her Garmin do what we wanted it to do, and it kept talking, giving us directions meant to get us around Phoenix, when we were trying to find a place in Rockford! It would. not. shut. up. I was ready to burst into frustrated tears, and at some point I veangefully pulled the cord out of the side of it, trying to just make it stop, but it kept on talking, because even when you unplug the charger cord, it is charged and has battery power and it just keeps trying to get you to turn right on M-85, which is a few hundred miles away!

Finally, finally, we got it to recognize that it was driving down a highway in Illinois, but it kept babbling about continuing for 20 miles on Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway, and I tossed it onto Diana's lap and told her, with disgust, that it just wasn't going to work, because I had no idea where it thought we were, and she said, "I think that's the road we're on," and you know what? I remembered that back in the foggy recesses of memory, I have heard Highway 20 called Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway, so yeah, it was all good then. (General Grant was quite the local hero around these parts. Who knew?)

We were following Rich, who was driving the Saturn, to Rockford so he could drop the car off to get a new muffler...system?, and we lost him the minute we left town, but we didn't see him broken down along the side of the road, so no problem. We picked him up at the dealership and he drove on the way home.

When we got home, I made a Spanish Omelet for dinner while Diana made an apple pie (actually it was two apple pies!)!! Diana says she learned to make the pie from our Grandma, and she doesn't have a recipe written down, although she did give me some sketchy directions one time. Rachel came by the house before work and she ate a piece, and said it is the perfect apple pie, better than all those apple pies we ate earlier this summer when RA and Rondee were practicing pie recipes for the county fair! That is some high praise!

Oh, I almost forgot about this, but before we drove to Rockford Diana and I went shopping at W@lmart to get a couple of things we needed, like pie crusts, and while we were there, Diana was completely minding the store for them. She was checking on the employees (dyed blue hair!), and told someone in the grocery area that they needed to clean up a squashed grape on the floor before someone's old grandma slipped on it and broke her hip. Then we went to the painting area where she had someone shake up a can of paint for us, and while we were looking at paint brushes, I noticed an old guy with a cane was watching us, and kind of following us, and when Diana chose a paint brush and flipped it into my cart, he came up and asked her where they kept the masking tape! She was happy to show him and recommend the best tape for his job, and while she did that, I ducked down a side aisle and called Rachel to tell her about it, because I thought it was so funny!

There was amusing people-watching in the store, and we spent some time speculating on the relationship between three people who were shopping together. Also, is there a shortage of hairbrushes in Illinois? Because about every third person we saw needed one.

So that was our day, and tomorrow we have to take Rich back to Rockford to pick up his car. Then he and Rachel are going to drive to Michigan to visit his parents and Diana and I are going to make pumpkin pies! And pork chops for dinner, just like Jen Lancaster. Oh, the happiness!

Yay for last minute plans!

Diana decided yesterday to come visit, after we found out that it's much less expensive to fly into Milwaukee. Her flight got in at 2:30, and Rich was busy today, so Rachel and Ash went to the airport with me.

Rachel and I both worked last night, but we slept this morning and got up at noon, and we were on our way! It's a little more than a two and a half hour drive to Milwaukee, but there isn't much traffic, and hey, you're driving through the country! It looks like a postcard!

On the way there, I got a text from Rich asking how we were doing. I told him that the person who said it was an hour and a half away was wrong, but we were fine. Suddenly he said:

Crap. My computer just blue screened. Must be your fault.
To which I replied:

Such is my enormous power.

That was the end of that conversation, because he had to go take care of his computer. Mwah haha!

When we got home, Rich was leaving for TaeKwonDo, and Diana and I made some polenta and squash casserole with squash that I cooked a couple of days ago for that purpose, and while it baked, we sat at our computers to check our email and worked on our farms. Sarah IMd me to ask how much parmesan to put in the polenta, and said she was making the squash and polenta, too! What can I say, we all appreciate good food.

After dinner, we were both tired, so Diana went to bed for the night, and I took my evening nap before work. We have big plans to go out for breakfast in the morning!

Yay, back to work tonight!

Well, I went to church today, but it was Stake Conference in Rockford, so we had to go all the way to Rockford, and we picked up my friend Shelley's sons to give them a ride because their parents are out of town, so the ride there was fun listening to the CD of music from Rachel and Ash's wedding, and oh yeah Ash? I told them that was you singing on it, haha! And they thought it was good!

So we got to the meeting and it was crowded because it was a meeting for the entire stake, which covers a lot of ground, and we were sitting on folding chairs in the gym, where all the people with kids sit, and the people like us who don't get there early enough to get a seat closer to the front.

It was okay, the noise of small children was a dull roar, but the talks were good and even though it was very hot, so hot that my brain was melting and I just sat and looked at my phone, wishing I could think of someone to text, because I knew Kim wasn't awake yet, but for some reason I did not even think of Diana, who I text during church almost every week! But then it started to feel cooler, because someone else must have noticed the body heat of a few hundred people was making the central heating unnecessary and turned it down, so that was good, and I had been ignoring the two little boys sitting in front of us, I was completely zen about them.

Until the kids got really rambunctious and the father took the older one, who was about four, out to the lobby, and the little one who was probably around two, started jumping from chair to chair on the folding chairs, which was noisy as well as dangerous. I kept on ignoring him though, and his mother was making an effort to keep him quiet, but at some point she let him get about 3 chairs away from her, and the little boy was right in front of Rachel and I.

Rachel told me later that the first time he stumbled on the chair and caught himself, that she started planning what she would do when he fell and cracked his head open on the floor - she knew she couldn't tear the fabric of her skirt, and she didn't care about the sweater she was wearing but she didn't want to take it off, so she planned to tear his cotton shirt into a bandage to stop the bleeding from his head wound...

She didn't tell me all that until later, but I could feel her practically jumping out of her skin with nerves next to me, and I was expecting him to fall, too, and then he put his hands up to his mouth and started to make a hooting sound and suddenly I found myself standing up and putting his arms firmly down by his sides and moving him over by his mother as I said, "You need to quit it!" in a firm voice!

I sat back down, feeling very embarrassed - oh my gosh, I grabbed someone elses kid! and Rachel was gasping with laughter and shock, and I started to laugh, but I felt so embarrassed! I leaned forward to his mother and apologized, I told her I was afraid he was going to fall, and she just shook her head and said it was okay, and it was okay, because he stayed on her lap after that and looked at a book with her.

Afterward I talked to her again and said I didn't think she was a bad mother, I was just worried and I told her about Rachel's plan to bandage him up, and she laughed.

Rachel called me later after we were all at home, and said she and Ash were laughing about what would have happened to them when they were kids if they had been acting up in church - how they would have been marched out to the lobby, the 'walk of shame', or no, it would have been the 'walk of pain' because they would have gotten a swat on the butt!

You know my parenting theories, I only have two - the first one is that you have to be the worst kid in the house so your kids need to be good to bring you up right, and the second one is that you only need to give your kids a good spanking once, or, if they're stubborn, twice, because after that they know if you have to get up off that couch, they better run for their lives!

So that was my day at church, and at home we took a nap and then I played with my farms on Farmville, and talked to Diana on the phone until it was time to come to work.

In which I was stuck at home.

I didn't wake up until about 11:30 this afternoon and I had a message on my phone that Rachel had just called. I called her back, and she was just leaving work! Her tale of how she ended up working 16 hours was a sad one, involving a crazy patient, a CNA with Swine Flu, and assorted other hospital happenings. So she was on her way home at last.

I made chicken noodle soup and did some laundry and then ... pretty much nothing. I farmed my farm on Farmville, and collected three stray cats and a pink cow, thanks to the helpful suggestions from friends for how to get their updates to show up on my facebook page! Jeff told me that cats give you yarn, not hairballs as Rachel suggested.

So Rich was going to a meeting in Rockford at 5 and I was supposed to meet him there at 7, and bring Rachel with me. But then Rich's car wouldn't start so he had to take the van, and Rachel felt sick when she woke up, so we both stayed home.

Which was fine, I took a walk, by myself, and played around with my farm, also by myself, and then I was bored. I knew this was going to happen, I knew it was going to be a long weekend, and I'm really looking forward to going back to work.

I was so bored, I thought I would just take a trip to W@lmart and walk around, buy a bag of onions, and some new earbuds for my iPod that Ash fixed for me (yay!), so I put on my shoes and a was reaching for my purse when I remembered - I have Rich's car and it won't start! Crap.

So I didn't go out. I stayed home. Did I mention that I was alone? I called Diana but she was at a party, so I just wrote a little more on my story and then I knitted on the never-ending sock for RA (and it's almost done, whew!) while I watched a very crappy movie on Netflix.

I can't wait to go back to work tomorrow night.

In which there are two trips to the grocery store

I woke up at 3 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep, so I just stayed up. I went downstairs and called Rachel, who was having a pleasantly slow night at work, and talked to her for a while, and I read for a while, and worked on my farm.

I got dressed at 7 and went to the grocery store to buy the cats some of their special food. They get one can of soft food every day at noon, and we ran out of it so they didn't get any on Friday, and you should have heard the pitiful mewing! You would have thought they were being tortured!

I came home and folded some laundry and talked to Rich, but then he went upstairs to work and suddenly I was soooo tired! I felt like a huge loser for not doing anything, when there are things that I could be doing, but I finally gave up and went to bed. I slept until 2 in the afternoon. Which is the time I usually get up, so I was sleeping on my normal schedule.

I went out with Rich tonight to pick up a couple of things I forgot from the store and to drop something off, and then we came home and watched TV.

While we watched, I knitted a little more on the second one of a pair of fingerless gloves. I think I made the first glove too short for a man to wear, because I have such short fingers, and I measured it against my hand. I'll try the finished glove on Rich tomorrow and see if it needs to have some length added.

What an exciting day we had.

It's a little colder

It's a little colder today, so when I went for a walk, I wore some fingerless gloves that I knitted last year, and they were great! They kept my hands perfectly warm while I talked on the phone! Yay!

Today I'm making yogurt in the crockpot, a project that I bought the ingredients for a week ago, or maybe 10 days, so I thought I'd better get on it before the milk went bad. It's not anything complicated, it's just a project where you put it together and stir it once in a while, but it takes about 16 hours altogether, so I just need to be here to do it.

So the yogurt is...well, making itself, really, and I also have bread rising, that is about ready to go into the oven, and I baked a butternut squash this afternoon, because that was another thing that needed to be cooked before it went bad. Actually, squash last about forever, but eventually I do need to cook them, and this is a good day for running the oven and warming things up.

That is about all I've done today. Tomorrow I'm going to make chicken soup and take it to someone in the ward who had heart surgery last week, and since she lives way out in the country, Rondee is going with me to keep me company on the long trip. It will get both of us out of the house.

In which I have another long boring day

With RA out of town, I hardly leave the house, and the first couple of days it's fun, because I'm home, and I can entertain myself - well, if entertaining myself means calling everyone I know on the phone, spending hours farming on facebook and chatting in IM with Sando about his Nanowrimo story.

It's been a few days since she left and I'm starting to get a little antsy. I am tired of not getting out, but there is really nothing to go out for. I have library books, the internet and my knitting, and there is a case of Diet Pepsi in the kitchen but I'm used to going out every afternoon for an outing with RA and we drive around and look at the scenery and talk about things, and I miss that when she's not here!

This afternoon Rachel came over for an hour while Ash was at work. She had a turkey sandwich and read my plot sketch, but she needed to go home and have a nap before work, so she couldn't stay. I sent my ipod home with her, and I hope Ash will be able to put the new battery in. I tried, but I couldn't get it apart.

I went for a walk by myself, just a mile, and I talked to Kim on my cell phone while I walked. It was about 50 degrees out, which is comfortable, except that my fingers got cold while I held my phone up to my ear. Tomorrow I'll wear gloves!

So that was my thrilling day. Stay tuned, tomorrow maybe I'll make a sandwich!

In which folding towels is exersize.

Yeah, I could not get interested in exersizing at all today, not even just 20 minutes on the treadmill, so I folded three baskets of laundry and called it good. Rich went to Tae Kwon Do and worked hard, so I guess he showed me.

Sando has been emailing me all day in high excitement about the novel he is working on for Nanowrimo. He has gotten a lot written and he was describing his characters tonight, and they sound very amusing.

Kim is feeling frustrated because she has so much homework that she doesn't have time to write, and she was complaining about Sando 'bragging' about his story, but he told me earlier that Kim told him to nag her relentlessly, and I think she has forgotten that. Or they have a different definition of nagging.

After Kim called me for the second time to complain about Sando's bastardry, I had a call from Rachel, and when I told her she said the same thing Rich did, "Doesn't Sando usually drop out in the middle?" Why yes, he does, and Rachel suggested that we should each predict the date he will give up - like when Carolyn was pregnant with Soren and we all picked a date. Rachel picked Nov. 10th and I picked the 15th, and I'll get Kim's prediction tomorrow. I marked them on the calendar in the den.

While we were choosing dates, Rachel predicts that her baby (Totoro) will be born a week later than its due date of January 24th. That would make her prediction for Jan 31, so we'll see how that goes.

I spent the whole day at home today again and it's getting old. Maybe I can sleep more. I can't farm more, and I'm not sure what else to do. I think tomorrow I'll have to go for a walk by myself - outdoors - just so I have something to write about.

I talked to Sarah this afternoon and she is really sick with strep throat, so send her a get-well email!

Oh, and one more thing - today's thankfulness: I'm thankful that it's raining, because it keeps the leaves on the ground wet and I am not sneezing and wheezing with allergies!

The magic freezer

I came to work tonight with three cans of pop, all of them at room temperature. Luckily we have a refridgerator in our department (doesn't everyone?)and the temperature in the freezer is set to supercold, so I put one of my pops in the freezer, and told myself sternly to remember to take it out in one hour! I had to be stern with myself because I know what happens to a pop that stays in the freezer too long, and it's not pretty.

So yay, I just took out my cold pop and poured it into a glass to drink it because I can't drink out of a can anymore after I read a gross story on the internet. I won't tell you what the story is, and Rich says it might not even be true, but hey, it was on the internet and the internet doesn't lie!

The other two cans are in the little refridgerator in the switchboard office, because they can take their time getting cold, and I will drink them later. Yes, that's right, we have a big fridge in the department and a little fridge in our office. The server room is also very cold! That is how we roll.

RA is out of town for two weeks, visiting her insane sister, so when I woke up at 2, I didn't go out to get some lunch or do any shopping. I stayed quietly at home, eating some leftover chili from last night for breakfast, and farming my farm in Farmville.

I sold all of my Halloween decorations on the farm and moved some of the animals around. I used my FV bucks to buy a garden gnome, because I have always wanted one. I bought a few fences, and used some that were gifts to fence in some of the animals, too.

Farmville information:

I don't know if I've told everyone this, but Billy No-mates told me that if you use hay bales to box your farmer into the center square - the one you always pop up in when you enter the game - it makes it faster to plow, plant and harvest. It doesn't take long to do those jobs when your farm is just a few squares, but it makes a big difference when your farm is bigger!

Wendy told me to save my gifts in the gift box until I had enough to get ribbons, so I'm doing that and I think I've almost got the last ribbon.

Here's a problem I have with the game - before I was playing it, I hid all of the Farmville information that people were sending to the news feed, because I didn't care, but now I can't figure out how to make it show up again! I want to get bonuses! I want to adopt lost animals! I don't have any of the ribbons for adopting strays! How can I make everyone's news about FV show up on my news feed again? Sarah? Anyone? Bueller? ...crickets...

Blog your bitching - you know you want to!

Some of the bloggers I read are doing a month-long challenge to write every day, and you know I like to be one of the cool kids, so I'm doing it too, but not on any official, signing-up kind of level. Just an unofficial challenge to myself and anyone who wants to join me, same as last year, when Jeanette challenged everyone in the family who writes a journal to do it every day for the month of November.

So last night Rich passed out treats to the Trick-or-Treaters, and our neighbor estimated - based on how much candy she bought - that we had about 200 kids come to our doors. I wouldn't know, because after one of the kids who came to our door early in the evening got smart with me at the door (and you know I can't let some kid lip off to me without replying), Rich banished me from passing out treats because he said we were going to get our windows broken! The little bastards. Next year I think I'll borrow a big dog to bark and scare them all away! That'll show 'em.

It was a long night at work. Because of the time change, I worked an extra hour, but the upside of that was that I got extra breaks from James, one of the housekeepers, who kept coming over to let me go to the ladies room so that he could have a break to sit in our office and read the People magazines we keep in the desk drawer.

At midnight last night Kim, Sando, and thousands of other people started writing their stories for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)! I was going to start writing my November novel last night, too, but I was reading something else all night and I couldn't tear myself away. Which means I need to get started today.

What I'm knitting today:

- working on sock #2 of a pair for RA's son.

What I'm cooking today:

- making a pot of chili, which reminds me, I should go stir that...

In which I have had plenty of sleep

I didn't work last night, so I went to bed early, and turned my phone off! I woke up early this morning when Rich got up, and hurried downstairs to harvest my crops from last night, because I was a little worried about the aloe vera I planted. I was afraid I wouldn't get it in time and it was going to wilt!

Fortunately, the aloe vera was just fine, the tomatoes were beautiful, and I could relax. Whew! Farming is a lot of work!

I haven't been doing anything worth writing about, unless you like to read the same thing every day: Went with RA to get a soda, stopped at the store, read a book, knitted something. So fascinating.

I have a bunch of half-done knitting projects and nothing else to talk about. I'll try to get out and have an adventure later, but RA is going out of town, so I don't see any real prospects ahead.

Oh, one more thing - this is making me so happy today. (Click on the word 'this' for the link) I don't care about watching Glee, although I do love Kurt, but this number is so much fun.

Hi Ho Hi Ho, it's off to work we go!

I came to work at 7 instead of at 11, because Lana called in sick. She has MS, so we are never sure when she calls in sick if it is MS-related, or if she has a cold, or if one of her many children has broken itself again.

Barb was here when I got here, and she wasn't happy about that! Oh well, she's having surgery (again!) in a few weeks, so she will be recovering at home for a while and it will be a nice little vacation for her. Wont' it?

So I stopped at McDonalds on the way to work and brought in some hot french fries for Barb and I, to improve our attitudes. It would have worked beautifully, too, but by the time I got to work, I was having a giant fit of road rage because I was driving behind someone's sweet old grandpa, who was going about 10 miles an hour! I think it must have been one of the old guys Sando overheard in McDonalds last week, complaining about how dangerous airbags are, and planning to disable theirs. They won't be needing them, they don't drive any faster than they could walk with their walkers anyway!

I really need a do-over on the parking job I did, too, but all the spaces where I normally park (Princess Parking!) were full! I had to exit the close parking lot and go around the block to the (slightly) less close lot and I'm parked all wonky, but I didn't even care.

I haven't worked the early evening hours at work for a long time, and I forgot just how many calls there are, and just how many cheap phones with bad sound quality there are in the world. I'm sorry people, when you are using your terrible-sounding phone and also slurring your words together? You're going to need to repeat yourself, so don't give me a bunch of crap about it.

It's okay, I'm getting my zen back now. I'm taking a deep breath, I'm going to ...

Rachel's here! She just showed up at my office door, bearing tacos! She said she dropped Ash off at his first night of work and kept the car to take him a burger later, and she came over to see what was going on at the hospital tonight!

So we were eating our tacos, and I showed Rachel my list of things to do before Thanksgiving - because we're having company for Thanksgiving dinner - and she immediately started mocking it!

Guest Entry from Rachel

What’s really going to happen with Mom’s to-do list this month

This is Mom’s to-do list:

• 1. Paint upstairs bathroom
  
• 2. Buy folding chairs (that match!)
  
• 3. Find a couch
  
• 4. Get cat's bathroom ceiling fixed
  
• 5. Scrape and repaint dining room wall
  
• 6. Clean fridge

So she asked me if I thought she would get it done before Thanksgiving. After a moments consideration, I said she’d probably find a couch and maybe buy some folding chairs. Here’s my predictions for what will happen with the rest of the list.

She will go upstairs to paint the bathroom. She may even get the cans of paint up to the bathroom. At that point she will look around the bathroom and start getting overwhelmed and crazy and say she doesn’t know where to start. She will immediately turn around and go back downstairs and get on the computer, possibly to look up on the internet where to start painting a bathroom, but while she is down there she will need to check her Facebook.

While she is on Facebook she will either A) talk about how great she is for painting the bathroom or B) talk about how crazy and overwhelmed she is because she doesn’t know where to start with the bathroom. Auntie Di will leave some sympathetic/inspiring comments. Then, Mom will call RA and they will go get a hamburger and when Thanksgiving comes the paint cans will be tucked away neatly behind the toilet, unopened.

As for the dining room wall. By Thanksgiving, the hole in the wall over the piano where the paint is chipping off will be a little bigger because in an attempt to accomplish something on her list, Mom will start picking at it. She’ll pick away with her fingers till she can’t get anymore off and then she"ll get on Facebook and talk about all the work she’s done and that she’s exhausted now.

The fridge might get cleaned, but that will probably involve some fighting and finally Dad will clean it out one Saturday just so Mom stops talking about it.

Agricultural angst

This farming thing is more work than I expected. I am running two farms in Farmville, because I used Kim's Facebook account to start a second farm when the crops on my farm weren't growing fast enough for my entertainment, and now it's almost too much for me.

I have my crop schedule down now, so that I plant short-growing crops in the morning before I go to sleep, and then I harvest those, and check on my animals, when I wake up in the afternoon. I plant a second crop after I harvest the first one, another short-term crop, and I harvest that before my evening nap, and then I have to decide if I want to plant one more short-growing crop, which means I have to harvest it again before work, or would it be better to plant a longer growing crop so that I don't have to worry about it until morning?

Last night I was doing my evening harvest, and I started with my farm, which I then replanted in rice, because it grows overnight, so I don't have to harvest it until I get home in the morning, and then I signed onto Kim's account so I could harvest her crop of blueberries, and plant rice on her farm, too.

Something kept slowing down the loading time on Kim's account, and I tried reloading the farm, but I couldn't get it to load. I noticed a chat window was open at the bottom of the screen, and it looked like she had been chatting with a friend on Facebook earlier in the evening. I knew she was gone to her night class on Wednesday, so I closed her chat window and tried to open up her farm again.

It still wasn't loading, and then a second chat window opened, and the first one was back up, so I thought that Facebook must be having some problems, and I clicked the chat windows closed and tried again to access the farm, and when I couldn't get it into it again, I had an idea of what the problem might be...

I texted Kim and asked her if she was on Facebook, and she said yes! I've heard of this, but I never suspected Kim of being one of those kids who takes their laptop to class and checks their Facebook page during class! I was too tired to care, so I told her to harvest her blueberry crop while she was online, and I went to bed.

When I got up to go to work, I checked Kim's farm, because I wasn't sure if she would have replanted her farm after harvesting, and I wanted to get something planted to harvest in the morning. I was pretty surprised to see that she hadn't touched those blueberries!

So I harvested the blueberries, and planted rice, although I probably should have put in pumpkins, because that rice crop won't be ready until later, and if I had planted pumpkins, they would have been ready to harvest in the morning.

Then I messaged Kim and let her know that I was shocked, shocked! that she hadn't harvested the crop, because hello? Those berries only stay good for 4 hours and I got them just in time! And guess what? Kim didn't really care. Can you believe it?

You know who cares about their farm? Diana! She called me at work last night, and she was feeling frustrated and upset, as anyone would at the prospect of losing their harvest, because she couldn't get into Farmville to take care of her farm! What is up with that? She tried refreshing the screen a few times, but she never was able to get it loaded, poor thing. I wish I could have done something to help her, but I can't access Facebook from work, so there was nothing I could do. It's so sad.

Our microwave died.

When I woke up today, the microwave oven was gone from the kitchen, and Rich's daily frozen lunch meal was sitting in the fridge. It was obvious that the microwave had died mid-cycle.

So I went to lunch with RA, and then we shopped at W@lmart for some things she wanted, and looked at the microwaves there. She thought we could probably get a better price at Men@ards, so we went there and we actually did buy one, but I don't think it was necessarily a better deal.

While we were checking out at Men@ards, I noticed the cashier in the next aisle had big flesh-colored spacers in his ears, and I poked RA to look at him, too, so we could share the horror. Then I recognized the kid wearing them - it was someone I used to think was the cutest kid in the neighborhood! Too bad he grew up into a hot mess. If I had been in his line, I would have pretended I wanted a picture to send to Kim, because she knew him slightly in high school, but I was just too far away to get a good camera shot with my cell phone. Darn!

Billy No-mates is working here tonight, setting up the blahblahblah system. I wish I'd known he'd be here, we could have planned ahead and got pizza!

And now it's quiet.

I got up today after about 5 hours sleep, and never got any more. Oh well, I'll catch up tomorrow. Or maybe Monday.

Kim was sitting on the couch in her pajamas, Rich was in the chair watching TV with the cats, and I had to go right to the den to start harvesting crops in Farmville. It's relaxing, really.

I found a letter from Wendy in my email inbox, letting me know that the increases I was working on the Mondo pulli aren't right, so I'm going to rip back on that and start again. (If you don't like to rip, you don't like to knit.) I don't know how I messed up the increases this time, I had them right the first time, but I had to start over with a larger needle to get the gauge, and now I've got them wrong. No problem.

So Kim went off to take a shower, and Rich went away to work on RA's computer, and I just fiddled around on Farmville, and uh, yeah, that's all I did.

Sando came over, having previously planned to go to late lunch with Kim, and they waited for Rachel to call about the apple orchard. Rachel worked last night too, and was just getting up, so they finally went to lunch, while they waited for her to call them back.

An hour later they called to ask for directions to the orchard. Kim and Sando had met up with Rachel and Ash at their place, and they were on their way, but having trouble actually finding the orchard. I know how that is, because how many times have I ridden around out in the country with RA, trying to find that place? I totally know where it is now, and I told them, but they didn't trust me, and wanted me to get the street address for them so they could put it into the Garmin.

While they were gone, I cleaned up the living room, because there was enough cat hair on the rug to make another cat. Another hour or so went by and then Kim and Sando returned, bearing apples, cider, and donuts from the orchard.

Rachel and I had tickets for a dance recital tonight, given in honor of Rachel's former dance teacher, by some of her former students who found out that their teacher has cancer. The show was to benefit the American Cancer Society, and of course we wanted to go.

Most of the dancing was modern, not ballet, and it was a very fun and interesting program. Some of the peformances were better than others, and because it was modern dance, some of it was inexplicably weird. There was a guest dancer from Chicago, a young black man, who was a wonderful dancer, and everybody loved his performance. That number was one of the best in the show.

The low point of the show was a number called Untitled, and Rachel and I amused ourselves afterward by thinking of titles for it. The music wasn't exactly music, it was the sounds of machinary not functioning properly. Broken Alarm Clock was one possible title, and also, Who Let the Cogs Out? Really, it was killing me, and Rachel said she wanted to jump up and start screaming! We both remained calm, but I think it was making me autistic.

The very last number was a dance over two stools, and the dancer was a long, lean beautiful girl, who was a pleasure to watch. She writhed over and around and under those chairs in constant motion, and kept it up through two Patsy Cline songs, and I just wanted her to sit down! It was making me unbelievable edgy, especially since I hadn't fully recovered nerve function after Untitled. I started giggling from nervousness, and Rachel was wondering what was wrong with me, but I shook my head and held it together until it was all over. Whew!

The dancers called their teacher up to the stage at the end and everyone stood and applauded her, and then they asked all of her former students who were in the audience to stand also, and Rachel stood up with the others, even though she is feeling clumsy and chubby (hello? pregnant!) and I was crying, but lots of other people were, too. It was very sweet.

And we laughed all the way to the car, because damn! Sometimes things are just funny.

Back at my house, Sando and Kim had been joined by Catsy, and they had been watching TV and computing, but they were moving into the dining room to play Munchkin, leaving the TV going so they wouldn't miss any of Spongebob!

I had an hour until it was time to leave for work, so I went up and just lay on the bed in the dark and dozed, but I could hear a constant murmur of laughter from the kids downstairs, and anyway, I was too wired up from the show to really nap.

So here I am, back at work. I'm going to just knit on a sock and read a book and calm down now.

In which Kim arrived home tired, and with roadbutt.

So Kim was coming home for the weekend, and first she got a late start because she had to stay and let her roommate's family into the apartment while her roommate was in class, and then she took a wrong turn because she was driving home without turning on the Garmin, just to see if she could do it, and her mind wandered, so obviously she can't drive home without it. She drove about an hour in the wrong direction, which resulted in tears and much cursing, which was frankly hilarious. Kim used the F word at least four times, and I was laughing pretty hard, until she sucked me into her black hole of misery and I started crying with her, because I know how it is to be lost and hungry and feel like you'll never get home! (Damn you, Wisconsin!)

So Kim is home sitting on the couch playing Guild Wars and watching ghost shows on TV, and I am at work. She's going to stay until Monday evening, having arranged for a friend to take notes in her Monday class. She just needs to be home, eat chicken soup, and relax. If relaxing means going to see Zombieland with Sando and then staying up late playing video games and eating pizza.

RA was having a breakdown today and took to her bed like an aging starlet, so I went shopping by myself. Just a run to the grocery store to get the stuff for chicken noodle soup, and some breakfast link sausages, because that is what I always buy when Kim comes home.

So in the last couple of days, I've watched two movies while knitting on the manly cabled scarf and waiting for my crops to grow in Farmville. Some of Kim's friends were making references to the movie Go, which I'd heard of but never seen, so I watched it on Netflix, and loved it! It's a dark comedy, and stars one of my favorite actors that nobody has heard of, Timothy Olyphant. Today I watched a quiet little movie with Parker Posey, called Broken English. It was one of those movies that Scott calls "They Came to Talk", and I really liked it, but you know I love those movies where people just sit around, wearing pretty clothes and talking about things. (There were no car chases or fistfights.)

And tonight I'm at work, where it is quiet and I have a book to read - Mystery at Longbourn - and the Mondo pullover to start over again. I've got a cold pop, and there is a distinct shortage of cat hair on the carpet of the office, which is not a bad thing at all.