Today's Character Lesson: Sharing

You know how a lot of the elementary and middle schools will do character trait theme months? You'll drive by and the sign out front will say, "This month's character trait is: Respect" or something like that? Well, today at the Farm we're celebrating a very important character trait. Sharing.

Greg has been so good about taking care of me while I've been sick. He's made sure I was fed and made runs to the pharmacy late at night for different drugs. He's brought me home from work in the middle of the day when I just couldn't do anymore. He's done everything he possibly could to make me comfortable and facilitate my recovery. Out of appreciation for his devotion, I am now inclined to practice sharing.

He's in bed with a low grade fever and feels like a bus hit him. I know that bus. It left me in its dust earlier this week. Don't mention it, honey, you're welcome. Glad I could share.

Sigh. Good thing I'm starting to recover so I can take care of him now!

On My Mind

Things that are on my mind at 4:30 in the morning:

1. Calculating how much comp time I'd actually built up this month vs how many hours I actually ended up taking off in 2-4 hours spurts when I first got sick last week. We have the dumbest rule ever where when you're sick the first 8 hours has to be taken from personal leave, then the rest can be taken from sick time, but it has to be consecutive. None of my time last week was consecutive, so anything I actually turn in would be personal time, plus Monday. I have to go in at least half a day on Tuesday for a class so that would reset the personal leave clock again. But I think I had about 10 hours comp time, so hopefully I won't have to turn in any of last week.

2. The weeds are taking over my back yard and I'm not sure how to best get rid of them. I'd rather crowd them out with good grass than use a chemical week killer, but that generally requires a good bit of continued care for the grass to grow well. I'm not very good at continued care. And did I mention my hubby is completely allergic to grass?

3. I wanted to put my sprouts in bigger pots this weekend, but I need to acclimate them to being out in the sunshine first. There was no sunshine this weekend. And I don't think I had enough energy to plant them anyway. But they've pretty much stopped growing, so I need to do something with them soon.

4. I wonder if I could play Wii pinball with the sound muted so as not to wake up the rest of the house. Greg's already had to get up to answer a page in the middle of the night, I don't think he'd be happy to wake up again to Gordie on the Taxi table yelling, "You give to me ride!" But the sound is pretty important to the game at times, so I don't know how well that would work.

5. What am I talking about? I need to be asleep, not playing pinball!

Give Up.

If this post had a time stamp it would read 4:18am. I remember a time, not that long ago, when 4:18am meant it was time to consider making a cup of coffee and deciding where to watch the sun rise, before going to bed. Ok, so it was that long ago, probably 14 years or so. Sigh. Now it just means I'm absolutely tired of being sick.

I emailed my boss(es) earlier this evening to tell them I was giving up and keeping my germs at home on Monday. I hate it. I hate taking sick leave. I never get sick when I don't have much going on, it's always when I'm slammed busy. I could probably muddle through half a day or more tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure if I hadn't muddled through quite so many days last week I probably could have gotten more rest then and would be closer to well now.

I give up. I'm staying home and trying to rest. Except clearly I've been awake since 3:3oam. That seems to be the magic hour when whatever I take before bed for my cough wears off. I'm now laying on the couch with the couch blankie over my head, which serves two purposes. First, it creates a Vick's tent which will hopefully help my cough. Second, it keeps Casper from seeing the light from my laptop out the living room window, which always results in him slamming himself against the back door until I let him in to hog the couch.

I haven't had a decent night's sleep in 7 days. Why am I not comatose?

How Bad Is It?

Bad enough we decided last Thursday to go ahead and cancel our garage sale.
Bad enough that earlier today we canceled my birthday dinner with Greg's fam.

I'm still sick. Coughing so much I don't sleep at night, and I can't imagine that Greg's been able to sleep much either. I was better enough to be able to cook and clean today, but not really well enough to do much at one time or to enjoy doing much of anything at all. Jennifer is also sick, and the third woman who was going to be doing the garage sale with us got some pretty bad news on Thursday regarding her mother-in-law's health. And of course it rained all morning. Let's face it, it just wasn't the weekend for a sale!

BUT, as bad as I've been feeling, and as much of an stressful and emotional roller coaster as I've been on the past five or six days (ya'll don't even know a fourth of it!), there's good stuff. The baby's doing great, for starters. They've posted some pictures on the racing forum here and here. I didn't want to just steal them, but I figured I could link to them! She should be going home this upcoming week. And by the way, I can't tell you how funny it is to read this thread on the forum and see all the tough, redneck, trash talking, curse like a sailor tough guys go all sappy about a sick baby.

I'm hoping for some good news on a different subject tomorrow, but I don't want to jinx it by saying anything yet. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Who am I kidding, we'll see if I can sleep any tonight and actually get out of bed tomorrow!

Heart Surgery and Miracles - Updated

Baby A's heart surgery is scheduled for Thursday morning around 8:00 our time. According to the docs at the hospital in DC, it's considered a fairly routine procedure, they do hundreds a year and she should be able to travel back home in about a week, good as new.

I have to admit that I'm a bit unsure how I feel about that information. On one had, how awesome is it that medicine has advanced to the point where doing an arterial switch on an infant is considered routine???

One the other hand, how frightening is it that a transposition of the greater arteries (that's the official name) is common enough for the procedure to be routine???

I've done some reading on the condition over the past couple of days (I really shouldn't use the internet at times like these!) and it seems that in most cases of children with TGA the body creates additional heart defects during gestation that compensate, allowing the blood to mix and provide oxygen somewhat closer to properly. In cases where it doesn't, the infant usually dies within minutes of birth. Nobody's quite sure how the body knows to do it, it just does. Just another miracle of creating life, folks. And in my book, miracles only come from one place. We're praying that Baby A comes home soon, good as new.

And for the record, I'm not calling her Baby A for any reasons of anonymity. I just don't know the correct spelling of her name. While watching The Little Mermaid on Monday I realized that it's the Sebastian pronunciation of Ariel, the three syllable version. Like Air-ee-al. Only they spell it with a y somewhere and an extra e, I think. If I can find out the correct spelling, I'll use it.

***And no sooner than I posted that I realized that I could probably find it at one of the racing forums they frequent. Sure enough, there's an entire thread dedicated to updates and good wishes for the baby, including an earlier message from Brad with this comment:

"aireyal is doing good.. except for the doctors cant pronounce her country ass name..

air-ree-AL is how we pronounce it.."

UPDATE: The surgery went fine, she's recovering and should be good as new in a week or so.

The Eruption of Mt. St. Vaporizer, and Other Nonsense

Yes, I'm sitting at home, after giving up trying to work and coming home at lunch today, watching my vaporizer erupt. It was a little scary at first. I refilled it, plugged it in, crawled back in bed, and the next thing I new it was bubbling water out of the steam vent, filling the little basin where the medicated goop lives, and spilling watery goop everywhere. Perhaps it's time to clean it out.

That aside, can someone explain this to me (oh wait Doghouse already did, I work for the state!):

I work for a healthcare facility.

I have benefits, including health insurance and a flexible benefit plan for out of pocket healthcare expenses, through my employer's plan.

When I went to see a doctor today at my employer's clinic, seven floors down from my office, I discovered that my own employer does not accept our employer sponsored flexible benefit plan.

To make it worse, the stupid doctor wouldn't give me a decadron shot. What kind of crazy quacks are we employing/training anyway???

Good Plans Gone Wrong

I had yesterday off from work for the holiday and had hoped to do some fun things. Unfortunately, fun turned into sick and other than meeting my parents for lunch I accomplished... holding down the bed and watching some movies.

Not feeling a whole lot better today, and haven't had a decent night's sleep since Saturday, but have entirely too much to do to stay home. I may go home around lunch and just take a box of stuff with me to work on in my pj's. We have our second and final round of interviews on Friday and I absolutely cannot be out sick that day. I also absolutely have to finish putting together application binders and interview packets. I had this week's schedule all worked out, but now I'd rather just go home and sleep.

Sentimentality

Why is it so hard for me to get rid of movies on VHS, which I have on DVD, when I no longer own a VHS player?

Perhaps it's because all the VHS tapes I have left are my Disney movies.

Perhaps it's because Beauty and he Beast was the first movie I ever bought. In any format. Ever. And I watched it at least six hundred times. Before I graduated high school. Sigh.

Perhaps it's because it's like getting rid of something that I used to think we be great to have if I ever had kids. That was before we knew what DVD's were.

For the record, I'm keeping the ones I don't have on DVD. I don't care if I have a VHS player or not. At some point I'm sure I'll replace them, but until I do, Fantasia is staying right there in it's drawer, in between to Fantasia 2000 and Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. Next to Snow White. I'm just saying. I can only give up so much at once.

Update on Baby A

I just talked to my mom and got the update. They did the cath and put in the stent without a problem, but it's a temporary fix. The criss-crossed blood vessel thing is that the one that is supposed to pump blood into the heart is pumping out and the one that is supposed to go out is pumping in. She'll be heading further north for surgery next week to reverse them. They won't take her until her mom is recovered enough to travel. They'll probably be going to a neonatal hospital somewhere in the Washington, DC area. The doctors are optimistic that she'll be fine, but any time you have to detach a blood vessel or two on an infant you pretty much have to be scared to death. As Brad put it, "This wasn't exactly what we'd planned..."

I'll have to be honest here, I'm baffled. I could understand if there's a part that didn't grow at all, or grew deformed. But to have them grow correctly, just swapped... The human body is so complex. And the idea that we have doctors who can do that, who can actually remove the blood vessels from the heart and reattach them, is beyond my comprehension. And I work for doctors who do work on hearts every day. Wow. God be with them, Baby A, the family, and the doctors.

Oh, I almost forgot, she was born last night, Thursday. My mom confirmed. There was a bit of confusion, what with the TWENTY SEVEN HOURS of labor and Brad's understandable lack of coherency when I was talking with him earlier.

Aching Heart

Sometimes I think my world is in chaos, especially the past couple of weeks. Then today I realize that it's nowhere close.

One of Dad's best friends became a father for the first time this week. I'm still not clear as to whether Baby A was born Wednesday or Thursday, but that doesn't really matter. My dad called this morning to tell me that Baby A was on her way from Meridian to UMC via helicopter for a heart cath and possibly a stent. From what I understand, they think the arteries in her heart are criss-crossed. I won't even pretend to understand what that means exactly, but there is talk of possibly having to send her to Arkansas for further surgery. They have a special pediatric program for some of the more complex cardiac procedures.

Brad, the new dad, made it here before Baby A did. He drove up right before the helicopter landed. Did I mention that he and Dad became good friends because they race together on the weekend and build race cars together the rest of the week? Anyway, he was calm and holding up well, but I'm not sure how long that will last. We got to the NICU in time to see them take her around after getting her off the helicopter. The grandparents and other family/friends were on their way. Except Baby A's mom, who had a C-section after TWENTY SEVEN hours of labor and is still in the hospital in Meridian.

So, if any of you have a little extra room on the prayer list this weekend, please send one up for Baby A and her family. I cannot imagine having a newborn infant undergoing invasive cardiac procedures and being two hours away in a different hospital, so maybe a special prayer for the new mom. Can their be anything more frightening?

And as a side note, I've always been in awe of our hospital helicopter. Every time I see it flying I stop and stare, watching it take off and land and wondering whose life they are saving today. It's a magnificent thing to watch. Seeing it land today was a whole new experience, knowing who the passenger was. Thank you, pilot and medical crew, for bringing Baby A here safely.

Bright Ideas

Out of the blue today I decided that I was tired of dealing with conference sign in sheets and trying to beg, bribe, and torture my fellows to sign in at all for their early lectures. I'm now shopping for a barcode scanner. Our badges have barcodes. If I had a badge scanner, I could set it up in the conference room and all they'd have to do is scan their badge when they walk in the door.

I got the idea from my mother-in-law who mentioned a while back that a department she used to work for had tried it with marginal success. I think she said they were still having to manually manipulate the data after the fact. I'm hoping to work out the programming details to get the ID numbers integrated into my attendance database so that it inputs itself. No more running across campus three times a week to drop off the sign in forms, no more going back an hour later to pick them up before they disappear, no more manually entering attendance into my database. I'll still have to create multiple forms to send in for CE credits, but it'll solve several record keeping challenges for accreditation purposes. It will eliminate a little paper in my office. It'll even be quite a bit more accurate, as it is a lot easier to initial somebody in on the paper sheets if they aren't really there than to scan in their badge.

My next technology project? Video cameras. Either to record conferences or, better yet, allow fellows on external rotations to video-link in live. That'll require a bit more effort (i.e. money), so for now, I need a barcode scanner.

I Hate the IRS Day

It's tax day. We actually mailed ours last week, since I knew I'd forget if we waited until the last possible minute.

The total for all the checks we wrote was about $4,000 less than what we owe on our house (once we send in the rest of this month's payments). I understand the whole income tax concept very well. I know the reasoning, and the inevitability. We were prepared for it. But that really didn't help much when it came to signing those checks. It's just the timing. The idea that those checks could have been made out to Chase instead of the IRS or State Tax Commission, and then we'd be free. The idea that a week ago we had enough money in the bank to pay off the mortgage, and today we don't. And because of that, next weekend I'm having a garage sale.

Ok, I'm not sure which is worse - not being able to send that money to the mortgage, or having another garage sale because we still have a mortgage. Damn you, Internal Revenue Service. I blame garage sales on you! One evil leads to another.

Memo to Jen

Memo

To: Jennifer

From: Susan

Re: Our Garage Sale

I realize it's almost two weeks away, but in light of the freeze last night I thought I should issue a reminder.

If there's snow, I don't go.

I don't care how much steaming hot chocolate is available. I don't care how yummy the cinnamon rolls are. I don't care how many blankets there are to wrap up in. I don't care how badly I want some of this junk out of my house. One hint of a snowflake this time and I'm staying home in bed!

The Gold Star of the Week Goes To...

I didn't mention this in my other posts because I really felt it deserved its own.

My husband is awesome. Remember that whole, "Last week was a nightmare" thing? Well, not only was he very supportive of the fact that I was going slowly insane, he went out of his way to make it better.

I mean things like running to the Clinton Visitor's Center on his first day back from his trip because I couldn't seem to get out there before they closed to get the visitor guides for my candidate goodie bags.

Things like making dinner magically appear on nights when I just couldn't.

Things like making a special trip home in the middle of the day Thursday to get his bowling gear because I was stupid and offered to pick a candidate up at the airport late that afternoon, not thinking about the fact that we'd carpooled and wouldn't have time to get home before Greg had to go back across town for bowling.

Things like making an early run to pick up the breakfast I'd ordered for Friday morning so that I could go ahead and get to work to set things up, and then waited 20 minutes while they finished up the order that they told me was ready when I'd called.

Things like making darn sure I ate lunch on Friday, which I hadn't managed to do on my own all week.

He takes good care of me. I'm a lucky girl.

The Perfect Storm

I couldn't explain all the bizarre craziness of the past week or so if I tried. I feel like I was hit by the perfect storm.

I'd just spent my weekend making a mad run to Arkansas and back, so for several weekends in a row there had been no downtime, no rest, no recharging. I started the week a bit tired already.

I had our first round of interviews on Friday, which is one of the most stressful things I do all year.

Add to that construction (more accurately, demolition) in the office that separates me from the hallway, creating a huge amount of noise and chaos. Then a faculty meeting, then a grant funding denial, then a sudden loss of a program affiliate that will leave us short $75,000 and, more importantly, a full year's rotation for one of our fellowships starting in July. Mix in three different candidate situations which would require an exception to our selection process (we only take 3-4 new fellows each year!) and a dozen urgent minor crisis on Thursday and Friday alone.

In short, I'm tired, I'm stressed, and I feel like I have no control over what's going to happen to my programs next week. It wasn't a good time. The silver lining? I held on by my fingernails, had a great interview day (at least for the candidates) and managed not to do or say anything terribly stupid in the meantime. Or burst into tears. Yes, I was exhausted. Yes I worked through lunch and came early/stayed late almost every day last week. But I feel like I handled everything the best I could, and was successful. That's not something I've been able to say very often. And yes, I prayed a lot! Perhaps that was the difference in weathering the storm this time.

Hello, Cruel World

I'm alive. Somewhat.

I feel like I've been through a meat grinder, head first. It's 11:27 on Saturday morning, and I'm still contemplating getting out of bed. How I answer that will determine if I make it to the Run this afternoon. Yesterday was hell. It started with me falling in the stairwell at work (yes, Jen, I took a digger) and ended with having one of my fellowships hit with a giant business-political wrecking ball. But in between, I heard rumors that our interviews went really well. From my perspective, it was chaos, so I'm glad to hear that our guests didn't notice.

I thought when I fell yesterday that I hurt my knee, skinned up my knuckles, and banged my face. This morning I think I can add jarred my shoulder, as it hurts more than the knee right now. Frankly, I never stopped moving until I fell into bed yesterday, so I could have been in pain lots of places and just didn't know it. My knee didn't start seriously hurting until I sat down for 5 minutes to visit with some of our family in the waiting room at Day Surgery. When I stood back up I was limping.

Still contemplating that shower. I want to go, but it seems very far away. At least... ten, maybe even twelve steps. Maybe I'll take a nap first.

Taking a Break

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We now return you back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Insanity, and a Meme

If I seem to go missing this week it's because I probably ran screaming down the street and haven't stopped. This week had been beyond crazy. We start our fellowship interview this Friday (have you seen the weather forecast???) and continue through the end of the month. I'm completely in charge and the planning hasn't gone well. For once it's not because of anything I did or forgot to do, but just because we don't have enough faculty to do everything AND interview twelve candidates, don't have enough space to interview twelve candidates, and don't have enough time to get it all done because of someone else's procrastination and a constant changing of direction by the department leadership. So, fairly typical.

That aside, I'm going to take the time to post this meme, since I've been tagged half a dozen times now, before I dive back into my crazy world.

The rules are:
#1 - The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
#2 - The second rule of Fight Club is, you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.
#3 - If someone says stop, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over.

oh no wait, that was something else...

What I was doing 10 years ago:
Student teaching (make it stop!) and contemplating what the hell I'd do after that.

Five things on my to do list today:
Only five??
1. Tour the local Visitor's Centers for propaganda to put in my interview candidate packets.
2. Hopefully make my dr. appt at 3:30
3. Wash laundry
4. Pick up hubby at airport (YEAH!)
5. Collapse

Snacks I enjoy:
chips & dip, dark chocolate, peanut butter, grapes & apples

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Cry, pay off house, quit my job, hire a maid, go to Disney, buy a nice beach house, give lots and lots of it to awesome charities, like the March of Dimes (shout out to Stacey).

Three of my bad habits:
procrastination... oh, I'll get to the rest later

Five places I have lived:
1. Vicksburg, MS
2. Hattiesburg, MS
3. Burnside, MS
4. Ridgeland, MS
5. Clinton, MS

Five jobs I’ve had:
1. Residence hall desk assistant & resident assistant
2. Admin Assistant for Staff and Student Development (dang, that sounds important!)
3. Disney Store cast memeber
4. Personal Trust Officer
5. Education Administrator

I'd tag somebody, but I don't have time. Gotta finish emailing reminders and agenda's, order breakfast for Friday, make a zillion copies of applications for the interview binders and putting together random stuff for the candidate packets!

Defeat

defeat:

1. To undo; to disfigure; to destroy.
2. To render null and void, as a title; to frustrate, as hope; to deprive

adjective
1.	beaten or overcome; not victorious;

2. disappointingly unsuccessful

noun
1.	people who are defeated

See also, Benjamin Johnson:



Susan 97
Benji 94

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Oh My

Greg is in Seattle. He told me tonight that he bought me a surprise at the awesome farmer's market he found. Then he sent me the link.

Oh my. Unfortunately, he only took one suitcase and it was packed completely full, so there's not enough room to bring home more than one bag. Since the shipping is $10 for up to 4lbs to order it, I suggested it might be cheaper to go ahead and buy another bag. He almost bought me some balsamic, but said it wouldn't fit. I've found about six other pastas I want. And the sauces, and the raviolis... Sigh. The closest reseller is in Shreveport! But there is one in Atlanta, which we do drive through on our way to South Carolina...

Economic Stimulus or Blood Pressure Stimulus?

I'm sure everybody knows about the economic stimulus checks that are supposed to be mailed in May. Turns out we're not getting one, so I don't much care. However, my grandma is eligible for one provided she files a token tax return showing her non-taxable retirement income

Being the sick and twisted person that I am, I actually kind of enjoy the challenge of doing taxes, so I'm quite familiar with most of the forms and such. Yes, I volunteered to do grandma's return so she could get her $300 check. Mom sends me the documentation, I do the return and file online through one of the free programs. Done.

Except the next day I get an email saying her return had been rejected by the IRS because the date of birth listed doesn't match their information from Social Security. I call Mom and confirm I have the right date. According to the email we should call Social Security and get it fixed there, but it could take up to four weeks. We don't have four weeks, and we're not sure it's worth $300 to deal with them anyway. So we decide to just print the return, have her sign it, and mail it in.

Except when I went to print it, the entire second page, as well as all of the instructions, prints in gibberish. One line reads Zpvs! gf ef s bml uby! I don't think the IRS will accept that. I think I'm about to print off a blank form and do it by hand. Geez. This shouldn't be so difficult!

Party Time

I posted pictures of Parker's birthday party on my Flickr. They had the party at the bowling alley. The manger was brilliant and put 3 kids per lane, so they went through their turns pretty quick and nobody got bored. Except maybe Dalton, but he found other ways to entertain himself!

Bwahaha - Going Down

Yes, I'm a posting fool today. But before I head off to find some groceries, I just had to get in one last thing...

Hey, Benjamin, how 'bout that Kanas-UNC game last night? What? Your pick for Champion lost? How sad. So who you got left picked for the final game? What? NOBODY? And if Kansas wins who will be the champion of our little bracket? What was that? A little louder, please? Did you say "You, Susan, Goddess of All Things, will be crowned Queen of the Bracket!" 'Cause that's what I thought I heard.

Goin' down, little man. Goin' down.

(Note: I'm not even going to talk about the MRBA bracket. I had nothing left before the final four! But if I can only take down one of my brackets, I'd so much rather kick Benji's trash talking butt than anybody else.)

Geezum Petes

For those of you who are out of state, the Clarion Ledger has a photo gallery of local area damage, and here's NWS description of the damage in Jackson from Friday's storm (yes, I'm ripping off the link from MR's blog). Jen, I hope your new office building held up. Sounds like the EF-2 was close to our old apartment. Yet another reason I'm so glad we moved away from Old Canton Road! Lauren - did Bryce and Rebecca come through OK? I was thinking their house was near that area as well.

And here's the damage to Vicksburg/Warren County. The tornado that touched down on Warrior's Trail was waaaaay to close to the home where I grew up, which happens to be where my brother still lives. Yikes. Luckily he had no trees on the house. He didn't say exactly how many were down in the yard, and I wish I'd stopped by on my way through town this afternoon to take a look. I thought the Vicksburg Evening Post might have a picture gallery, but apparently they weren't even able to print their Saturday edition due to the power outage. They did post online and the picture from the story on the front page is from the roof of my high school.

In case you didn't notice, I'm both terrified and totally fascinated by our crazy weather. But I also know from being in Arkansas this weekend that most people outside of our local area had no idea what was going on. Lynn's in-laws were driving through Jackson around noon, on their way to her house, and ended up pulling off in Clinton to let the worst of it pass through. When I told them what they had almost driven through they were shocked. They had no idea.

FYI

The Louisiana Lottery jackpot is up to $68 million. If you take the payout instead of the annuity, that's about $40 million. After taxes, you're looking at an actual take home of approximately $20 million.

No, I didn't buy a ticket. But for as long as I can remember, anytime I had the opportunity to drive through Louisiana and see a Lotto Jackpot sign, I've played the, "How much would that actually be, and what could I do with that money..." game. Driving up to Arkansas on Friday it was at $50 million, but today it was up to $68 million.

When it gets over $200 million my dad will sometimes send my brother over to get one ticket. He never buys more than one. He says if you buy two, you cut your return on investment in half.

Big Thanks

Thank you, Jennifer and Rob, for sharing your electricity and guest room with us last night. At 4:30am I certainly appreciated waking up half an hour closer to the airport. And Greg certainly appreciated having clean pants for his trip! Hope we didn't make too much racket trying to get out of the house. (And P.S. - I am now dog-nip to Casper, who immediately noticed I was wearing Eua D'Wrigley and spazzed.)

And thank you to the Entergy crew that had our power back on by the time I got home at 6:00 this morning. I was very happy to see the street lights on when I drove down our street! I've had a tremendous respect for the line workers since the ice storm we had when I was in 9th grade. Times like these they have a very crappy job, but they tend to do it very well!

Hoping for the Best

I decided I better post before I leave work, since I don't really expect to have power when I get home. Why? Because I'm stupid. I intentionally didn't wash Greg's work pants last night so I could wash them tonight and throw in the ones he wore today. You see, he leaves for a work trip tomorrow and will need to take most of them with him. Except they're all still in the dirty laundry.

Thus, major storm, massive destruction, and power is out all over Clinton, including most likely the power that runs my washing machine. Let's hope the power poles that snapped on Northside Drive weren't the ones that ran lines to my house. Oh wait, let's hope there isn't another giant tree down, this time on my house. The damage on Northside is very, very close to our neighborhood. The good news, I've checked in with my dad and my brother already. Last I heard from Bill he hadn't made it home yet so he didn't know about damage, but everything was okay on the farm in Philly. All that's left is to see if our house is still intact and make sure the pup didn't get squished.

Special Message for Casper:
Pup, I hope you didn't blow away! I know you weren't very happy when we left you inside this morning, but hopefully now you understand why. You're name's not ToTo, we didn't want you to learn to fly today!

Memo to Stacey

Memo to Stacey:

Run From the Sun. I can do it. Made 2.9 miles tonight, could have done more if I hadn't run out of neighborhood and daylight. No problem. Now I just gotta get my stamp and my registration in the same room.

Susan

*********

Memo to Stacey:

Susan is smoking crack. She's lost her mind. We have been screaming loudly trying to get her attention, but she doesn't listen. We have contacted our lawyer and are filing for divorce.

Susan's Knees

Update on the Chief

I posted earlier about my former boss being diagnosed with a brain tumor, so I thought I'd share the update I got today. One of my covert spies at the bank forwarded me an email from his wife. It was determined that he had a fast growing marble sized tumor in his frontal lobe. The surgery successfully removed all visible signs of the main tumor, which was determined to be malignant, grade 4. As soon as he is physically recovered from the surgery, he will have chemo and radiation to erradicate any remaining tumor cells. He's still having a little trouble communicating and using the correct words, but his doctors said it was normal at this point and should improve.

I was glad to see the actual email from his wife. I worry about her. They have a very close relationship and I know she relies on him for a lot. We used to joke that she was destined for sainthood for putting up with him, but this is probably the most difficult thing she's ever been through. Thankfully, she sounded fairly positive in the email. She ended the email with this:

"We never know what God's plan for our lives is. Tell someone today that you love them, and that Jesus does too."

Early Lessons

I got lost in the Walmart parking lot last night. No, that's not news or anything, it's just the background to why this came up. You see, when we started checking out I realized I'd forgotten something I'd meant to look at, so Greg finished checking out and took the bags to the car while I ran back to get what I needed. By the time I got outside I had no idea where the car was. I had a general idea of where we normally park and roamed in that area until Greg, who had been looking out for me knowing I had no idea where the car was, waved enough to get my attention.

Greg had realized when he got to the car that this was a bad plan, as it is normally his job to lead me back to the car anytime we go into a store with a big parking lot. He pointed this out last night, and reminded me that this is something he's known quite literally from the day we met.

That would have been at a midnight movie with a mutual friend. We left the movie at 3am. As we were walking through the parking lot Greg looked around and I was gone. He was a bit concerned and said something to our friend who responded, "Oh, she just lost her car and went looking for it. She'll find it eventually." Yep. And Greg's been in charge of finding the car ever since. Guess he's afraid that one day I won't find it and will be lost forever at the mall. That almost happened once in Vicksburg...

Comedy of Errors

Laurel and Hardy are here at the house to fix our DirecTV service, which hasn't worked right since the day it was installed. Ironically, they still didn't show up in their designated window of 4:00-8:00 PM. They showed up at 3. Luckily I was able to leave work even earlier than planned, but seriously, why in the world can't they just show up when they say they will?

Under the circumstances, I don't find Laurel's April Fool's jokes about a six month wait to get a new box very funny. And a word to the general population, downloaded ring tones for text messaging aren't entirely appropriate when you're supposed to be installing equipment at someone's house. Hardy's cell phone is about to make me crazy. Put it down and set up my new DVR, please.

Sprouts

I got sprouts!

I know, I know, sprouts aren't exactly a successful sign of growing plants from seeds, but for those of us who are seed challenged, it's at least a sign of progress.

But here's the problem. I planted 8 different types of seeds, including 72 indoor cell packs and 3 short rows of outdoor seeds. If half the seeds I planted came up, we'd have to move to a bigger place just to have room to plant all of them. I'm not exactly worried about that, as I don't expect hardly any of them to actually survive to full plant-hood.

The bigger problem? I sort of forgot to label which seeds I planted where...