6 days later...

I have some catching up to do.

I worked late on Wednesday to post something. The boss literally said, everyone can go home but Elaine. Seriously, he said that. And then sat in my cubicle while I had trouble posting. Yikes.

Thanksgiving was delightful. Totally stress free. We got up, had a big breakfast, went to the gym, hung out. We didn't have to hurry at all. In fact, we were all ready to go 1/2 hour before we needed to leave. That was a nice feeling.

Friday we met The [partial] Committee for lunch. That was fun. I brought a leftover Chocolate Peanut Butter cheesecake for dessert. Mmmm, delish.

Saturday night, Cindy and Tina took the kids and Micah and I had a date. We had a nice, quiet dinner (with no highchair, crayons or sippy cups) and then went to a movie. We were home before the kids. Party animals.

Yesterday we hit the grocery store. Completely out of milk and juice.

A week or so ago, the bottom part of our dishwasher fell off. Ok, it didn't fall off. I ripped it off. I was standing at the sink and Evan was climbing on the kitchen chairs. He started whining and I turned - quickly - to see what the trouble was. I thought maybe he was stuck. Either my shoe or my pants got stuck on the bottom of the dishwasher and I ripped it off. I attempted to fix it but decided to leave it for my very handy husband. He looked, decided he couldn't fix it and propped it up with tomato soup cans. He then announced that we need a new dishwasher. The soup cans were fine with me, but hey, whatever. It's not really worth arguing with the man. Friday we stopped at Lowe's and checked some out. I didn't want to spend too much considering we might only be in the house for another year or so, but a major name would be nice. Doesn't have to be Maytag but at least something I've heard before. We select one and he says he'll go on Wednesday and pick it up. Cool.

Yesterday, he comes home and announces that he purchased a dishwasher. I ask the brand. He tells me. Never heard of it. Very, very basic. One dial, one switch. [sigh] Whatever. Does it wash dishes?

I'm sitting in the living room when I hear what sounds like the vacuum cleaner. I then walk down the hall and see the vacuum sitting idle. What the hell is that sound? Our new dishwasher. Are you kidding me? I track him down and ask him if he intended to buy the loudest dishwasher available. He says it's loud because it doesn't have the insulation on it. Well, Bob Villa, put it on! He pulls the dishwasher back out and puts the insulation on. Still hearing the vacuum.

Item number #437 that Micah is banned from doing alone: buying major appliances.

I told him if he even tries to buy a washing machine without me, he will march it right back out to the car and back to Home Depot/Lowe's.

I started dragging out Christmas decorations this weekend. I pulled out all the storage bins and started divying the stuff up by the room. It might take until Christmas to get completely decorated. Luckily, it'll be easy to put away come New Year's Day.

120 minutes

That's how long it took me to get home from work last night. A little rain and everyone in Baltimore panics and forgets how to drive. The ramp to get onto the Beltway going in the direction I usually take was jammed. I opted to go the other way around. Bad idea. That was jammed too. After an hour, I jumped off, heading for surface streets. At least I could move a little bit. My foot was cramping from working the clutch. Surface streets weren't much better. Another hour there. No matter which way I went, it was the wrong way.

And the weirdest thing happened - twice. I got disoriented as to my position. Between the darkness, the rain, and not being able to see much more than the rear of the car in front of me, two times I thought I was somewhere other than where I was. Bizarre.

This morning, Evan fell and bumped his face on a puzzle. He was crying and touching his face and reaching for me. I'm wearing a white shirt. I wasn't going to hold him until I was sure he wasn't bleeding. Is that wrong? He got lots of hugs once I knew he wasn't going to leave a mark.

Obligatory post

I feel like I have a fever today. I don't feel bad, my head just feels hot. I could walk down to the health unit and find out for sure, but that seems like too much trouble. They write your name down when you go in there and I'm just not in the mood to have my name written down.

This weekend, I went to the Awesome 80's Prom with some friends. It's an interactive play. It was like being at the prom in 1989. So much fun. Costumes were acceptable but not required. I was almost sorry I hadn't thrown something together. The characters were in the crowd talking to everyone.

I ran some errands with the kids on Saturday. Always an adventure. Got a lot accomplished. What a good feeling.

Evan has overcome his pop-tart snobbishness and will now eat the "toaster pastries". Hannah, however, insists on eating "my" pop-tarts.

I just did some on-line Christmas shopping. Disney has character pajamas for $9.99. What a deal!

I'm looking forward to the abbreviated week. I only have to work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

I don't have anything else to say. I should get back to work. Probably my oddest post to date.

Pop-Tart snobs

Evan has discovered pop-tarts. And if Evan's eating a pop-tart, then Hannah must eat a pop-tart. Yeah, mother of the year, I know. They tore through a box in no time. I figured I'd buy the store brand "toaster pastries" if they're going to be eating them everyday. I figured they'd never know the difference.

Both of them opened the cabinet, looked at the white box (instead of the Kellogg's blue), then looked at me like, what are you trying to pull here? I showed them the aluminum wrapper and then the delectable pop-tarts inside. Hannah told me they smelled funny and Evan gave me that look again. Hannah insisted on eating one of "my" pop-tarts (Kellogg's Low Fat Cinnamon Brown Sugar) but I was able to convince Evan to try one of the others. He only ate about half. [sigh] Kellogg's, here I come.

I told Micah this story when he called me Monday morning from work. I haven't heard him laugh that hard in a while.

We told the outlaws about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. However, it could be the calm before the storm. It lost something when Micah himself got confused about our "plan".

Every year on the night before Thanksgiving, I like to watch the movie Home for the Holidays. Instead of renting it, this year, I bought it. Now I never have to worry about being able to rent it.

Usually at this time of day, I'm fighting to stay awake. Today, we had a little party with desserts so I'm all hyped up on sugar. Might be a good thing. Except for my waistline.

Dodging bullets and x-rated soap

The Outlaws called last night wanting to arrange a visit for this week. There's a family party on Saturday, I asked if they were going. They are. So are we! It was decided we'd just see each other there. Woohoo!!! Avoided that awkward 90 minutes.

I should get off at 3 today but I'm waiting for a file to post. Yes, it's the same file from last week. This happens every once in a while. They just can't get their acts together enough to post something in a timely manner. So I might be working late today.

On Monday, I brought home a donut for Hannah. It was beautiful. Rainbow sprinkles as far as the eye could see. She was delighted. Scarfed it right up. I looked again yesterday but there were no rainbow sprinkled donuts. When I got home last night, the first thing she said to me was, Mom, where's the donut? I told her they didn't have any. Bummer, she said. LOL I assured her that I'd get her one the next time I saw them.

We got the proofs from Hannah's school pictures yesterday. Beautiful. I don't know how I'll ever choose. Evan on the other hand....there were no pictures of him because he wouldn't cooperate. He wanted no parts of having his picture taken. We have a family portrait scheduled for Friday evening. I hope he gets over his aversion by then. We're going with a casual theme this year. Red shirts and denim for the kids and probably cream or white with denim for us. Micah suggested we all wear the same cheesy Christmas sweaters. Maybe next year.

There is new soap in the bathroom here at work. It's thin and pearly colored. It comes out of the pump in spurts. Do you see where I'm going here? I can't help but hear porn music in my head when I wash my hands. What was wrong with the yellow soap?

It's the most wonderful time of the year

I'm starting to believe it. Last week I heard a Christmas song on the radio. And this morning, I saw 2 houses decorated for Christmas. I'm not ready for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I've done some shopping but I am NOT ready for decorations and music. Uh-uh.

I gassed up the car this morning. It felt SO good to pay less than $25 for a fill-up. Whew.

We had the posting from hell last week. I had received some files for posting. Rumor had it that they would need to be posted on Tuesday, the day I left early for a GYN appt. I got everything ready and sent an email to my backup letting him know that this might happen. Well, apparently, I wasn't clear enough on the "might". He posted them. Wednesday morning, I happened to check the page and saw the files posted. I emailed the folks in charge to find out if the files had been ok'd. They had not. I had the files pulled ASAP. It all went downhill from there.

Long story short, some people didn't like the policy anyway and then others were super pissed that it'd gotten posted. I was really sweatin' it Thursday and Friday, wondering what they could do to me. I finally had a chance to talk to my boss about it, and found out that I was fine. She and others had my back. They thought the files would be posted on Friday. I was supposed to get off at 3. Rightfully so, the bosses were a little gun-shy about leaving the posting to my backup. I wound up staying until 5 when I had to leave to be able to get the kids by 6. My boss called me on my way home to tell me that the files weren't going up that night. Welcome to the government.

Got Candy?

Last Friday morning, I went in to work really early. At about 5:50 am, I saw a guy on his cellphone. Who the hell is he talking to at 10 of 6?

Halloween was fun. The kids got tons of candy which is now in my kitchen. The leftovers of the candy we gave out is now in a bucket outside my cubicle. The vultures here have picked it almost clean. It's also been added to by coworkers.

Picture this, a beautiful sunny November day, 20+ people standing around a BMW convertible in the parking lot. The driver, a man wearing a shimmery turban. His passengers, 2 men in drag. This is what we did yesterday at lunch. We had a contest related to our annual charity fundraiser and the prize was a ride in the boss's BMW. Somehow, we ended up talking the winner into taking the ride dressed in drag. I'm not sure how the other guy wound up in a dress. I think he liked it. Since it was lunchtime and a beautiful day, there were other people not in on the joke outside. No one questioned us. What they must have been thinking.

I had a GYN appt yesterday. Whoopeee. The appt was at 1 so I took the afternoon off. You never know what time you'll get out of there. What I didn't know was that I was his 1st appt. I was out of there at 1:25! I called Micah and he said, you feel a little guilty, don't you? I did, actually. But I got over it and went to the gym. Then I went home and put away Halloween decorations and got the kids' laundry put away.

Not only was I the first patient of the day, but I was also the first patient after his Caribbean vacation. He said it was nice to have a nice, normal patient as his first. Aw shucks.

My biggest driving pet peeve is the driver who makes a mistake and tries to correct it immediately. For example, the driver who realizes that they need to make a right, not a left, and attempts to cross all traffic to do so. Or the driver that realizes they wanted to go straight, not turn left and tries to wriggle into the straight traffic when the turn light turns green. This happened to me yesterday. 2 cars in front of me in the left turn lane. The guy didn't want to turn, he wanted to go straight. So instead of making the turn and doing a u-turn somewhere, he just sat in the turn lane with his right blinker on. Grrrr. Luckily, the other turn lane was clear so I was able to gun it around him and still make the light, therefore avoiding my second biggest pet peeve - Missing the light because of some IDIOT.