Month: October 2005

The week of stuff concluded with minimal loss of life and sanity all around. I missed Girl Scouts on Tuesday due to the Problem Child at work (note to self: no more favors after 3 PM on Tuesdays, not nobody, not nohow) needing a ride. Yes, I know I’m a marshmallow. Performance review time is coming up and I expect to burst into drippy, gooey, molten flaming wrath on her objectives for next year. Payback is a-coming and it’s riding a mean horse.

I’ve been too mean to tiernen lately. I know it’s mostly stress and aggravation from things not his fault. He just catches the shrapnel more than everyone else, because I can avoid them when they piss me off and divert or blow up in private. He has to go home with snarly ol’ me.

Really what I need is for all of the programs and etc. at work to be over so I can take a little break without feeling too guilty for skipping work. It seems to me like everyone else (with very notable exceptions) I work with suffer absolutely no pangs of conscience when they take half a month off of work. I always feel like I should be helping out and being involved in what is going on at work. Granted when I actually do take the time off, I rarely give work a thought while I’m gone. It’s just a matter of summoning up the gumption to schedule myself for a week off. Really, it’s ridiculous.

On the Tom’s mom front, no change. We’re still waiting to hear from Mike what they decide to do with her.

On the positive side, my grandfather’s 88th birthday is Wednesday. Happy A-day Mr. B.

Dat’s it fer now.

I am bored. Working on the weekend sucks. 1 1/2 hours left and no relief in sight. *sigh*

So Tom talked with his bro a couple of times yesterday. Mom is not better. The mass in her lung has gotten bigger. Whenever they take her off her oxygen mask, her blood oxygen level drops and she starts to suffocate. The doctors want to do more tests and we should know more on Monday. They are talking about sending her to Hospice, managing her pain and just waiting. She has a living will forbidding heroic measures.

We’re trying to decide who should go up and when they should go. This decision is complicated by work committments, available time off (or lack thereof) and the fact that we have one vehicle for the two of us. We’re trying to make the best decisions we can, but it’s not easy.

It’s so satisfying to witness a person redeem themselves. My Problem Child at work is mainly a problem because she has focus issues wedded to an extrememly passive aggressive personality. She’s your best friend one minute, then jumps down your throat the next. She’s tough to keep on task and she’s a “self starter” (a phrase I personally dread), meaning that she loves to start projects that she sees as being required to be done whether or not the project meshes with the organizational plan for the workplace.

HOWEVER, she is very good at working her contacts. And she seems to have helped us out of a big bind.

We are planning our annual fall event. Usually we get the assistance of a group of solider who are tasked to work the event. These soldiers go out in their big solider truck, pick up our tents and tables and etc. and set up our event stuff. After the event they break everything down and return it. This year, we are not getting any official soldiers to do this. We have been trying to get volunteers through the offical volunteer channels here, no luck. We have been asking for volunteers to work and earn time off, no luck. So today we started asking everyone we know to volunteer and “PC” may have struck gold. Apparently she’s found some soldiers (and they may even have a truck) to help us set up and tear down for the event. HOORAY!

Now we’ll see how everything pans out.

**fingers crossed**

We’ve been trying to get in touch with Tom’s brother for the past two days for a mom update. So far, bupkis.

We have much stuff to do this week. In addition to work, natch, we will be appearing at a Medieval Book Fair on Monday, leading the Girl Scout meeting on Tuesday, going to the SCA Girls Night Out on Wednesday, setting up for the Girl Scout Spooktacular on Thursday, participating in said Spooktacular on Friday, and working and doing a birthday party on Saturday. *Whew*.

On the kitty front, Winston seems much better. No more puking. I changed his food recently and I think that’s what caused the throwing up. He curled up on me last night while we were watching TV. Cool weather does have its advantages.

Tom’s mom is back in the hospital with pneumonia. We’re sending good thoughts her way and trying to keep up to date on her progress. We’re going on the assuption that no news is good news.

 

Stolen!

Winston cat has been throwing up. I think it’s just from all the licking and scratching he’s been doing, but if he doesn’t feel better by tomorrow I’m going to take him to the vet. It’s so hard to tell with cats what you need to worry about. He seems fine otherwise, he’s still pretty active and his eyes, ears and nose are all clear. Luckily for us he’s pretty noisy about it, so we can kick him off of the bed in time when he starts to heave at night.

Poor little guy. He’s so much more high maintenance than his sister.

I’m trying to organize my sewing projects for the winter. I promised tiernen some more fencing garb, and I have a few things I want to make for myself. I need to do some clothes for work and some medium nice SCA stuff for camping events and the like. The trouble is knowing where to start. I hate cutting fabric, because I always wind up having second thoughts.

So, I just wind up accumulating more fabric, but not actually making anything except at the last minute, or I go back and remodel something I already finished. It seems like I’m always planning and never going forward.

Should I just plunge in, or should I take everything out, sort it one final time, designate a project to each piece and set a schedule I’m going to stick to? The first seems too haphazard and the second is nearly impossible.

Help!

Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful weekend, this is good, because it also looks like we’re going to be BUSY. We have hanging out with gamer folks tonight, then a SCA/birthday party tomorrow, then Baronial fighter practice and maybe a trip to the State Fair on Sunday. Busy, busy, busy.