My nemesis

Since about 7 o'clock Sunday evening, I have wanted nothing but my sweats and my bed and a cold rag and a Sprite.  I'll spare you the details, but it hasn't exactly been pretty at my house.  The good news is that I'm starting to feel better.

Because I have a job with a sort of "quota", I have chugged Pepto and come to work for the last two days (although I did leave early yesterday).  I've decided that this is also something a grown up would do and that I get to say I have completed step 4.

I gave myself bonus points because - can you imagine having to deal with this:

every time you try to print a document?  I know it will happen at least once, but most of the time it will be three times (and sometimes more).

All those red dots?  Places where paper has lodged itself into the tiny crevices of that machine.  Then, once all the paper is removed, the freaking covers must be closed in just the right order (like a combination lock) to get the damn thing to stop flashing and resume printing.

Before you ask, yes, there is somewhere else I can print.  It's just incredibly inconvenient, especially when I'm in a hurry, and now that the printer on my side of the office is the devil incarnate, the entire office is printing over there, which is a special little cluster unto itself.

We all on board?  I get step 4?  I thought so.

My day in pictures

Felt like doing this to a particularly cantankerous copy machine at work:

Felt like doing this to a co-worker:

Had a lunch date:

All better.

A good day

Yesterday was weird and not fantastic and all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and sleep it off.  Life has been exceedingly stressful of late (few of us are digging this economy, right?), and I was about one more sitting-on-the-side-of-the-road-waiting-for-my-car-to-relent-and-take-me-home kind of day away from a total breakdown.

When I finally did make it home, I unloaded all of my emotional baggage into Michael's lap and made him listen as I tore through the list of each and every thing that was weighing on me.

This morning, as he drove me to work, he remarked, "I think you're going to have a better day today."

Mostly because he knew that he was on his way to arrange these:

to arrive in my office some time before lunch with a giant card announcing a surprise getaway to a bed and breakfast.

Michael and I have never been on a trip together. We've started plans for trips many times, but other stuff always intervenes causing us to forego the trip and handle more pressing business.

Well, now there is a trip.  Booked.  And my fantastic mom/Silas' fantastic Nana will be keeping Silas.  And I have requested a day off work.  And I'm buying a new dress.  And I'm going to feel pretty in it, dammit.

He spent the morning ordering the flowers and having the card made and the rest of the day taking care of my car so that I don't have to have anymore sitting-on-the-side-of-the-road-waiting-for-my-car-to-relent-and-take-me-home kind of days.

Michael never just hears the words. He always listens for what they mean, pinpoints what I need and makes it happen. That is just one of the many reasons I adore him and would marry him a thousand more times if I could. 

Because I've seen at least a hundred people bitch about posting pictures of flowers on Facebook, I decided to dedicate a whole blog entry to my flowers and my card and my husband for sending them and booking the trip that made my day and may have possibly pulled me back from the brink of insanity.

Thank you, Michael, for all that you do as a husband and father, and thank you, God, for allowing me to find a man who goes out of his way to make sure that the good days in my life most certainly outnumber the bad ones.

I fell off the wagon

Today, Google (via healthline.com) has diagnosed me as having one of the following:

• Migraine (ruled it out because I have migraines occasionally, and this ain't no migraine)
• Heart attack
• Meningitis
• Poliomyelitis
• Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
• Aneurysm in the brain

And I had been doing such a fantastic job of avoiding self-diagnosis of deadly diseases.

My memory is worse than I thought

It has come to my attention that I am mis-remembering my early-20's, which isn't very surprising after the twenty minute conversation Michael and I had about my horrible memory yesterday.  It is now apparent to me that I have always lacked the ability to dress myself.  Please see the photograph below for evidence of this fact.

This outfit is what I wore to an awards ceremony my former law school threw at the end of a summer program it sponsors.  I had to speak at that ceremony.  The earrings speak volumes, don't they?  Also, that inch of stomach on display.  Classy touch.  

A friend of mine posted the picture on Facebook, and I could not stop staring at those earrings.  No wonder I quit accessorizing.  I was doing it very poorly.

All better

While I may not always be Silas' go-to-gal, he has certainly learned that mommy has the magical power of "kissing it better."  

Michael called me after I got to work and had me on speaker phone (because his phone has been broken since about a month after he got it) talking to me about some video game.  In the background, I hear "mommy! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."  So, I asked Michael what was wrong with Silas.  He informed me that Silas had injured himself and was running toward the phone holding his hand out. "He wants you to kiss it better."

So, I had to kiss Silas' boo boo better over the phone while Michael was cracking up in the background "he's holding his hand right up to the phone!" and I'm saying, "muuuuuuah!" and here goes Michael "no, it's a bad one, he wants you to do it again, bahahahahaha!" Me even louder this time "MUUUUUAH! Is it all better yet?"  

Immediately after I finished my question, I heard a throat clear down the hall in a you're-making-me-uncomfortable-by-talking-like-a-baby-and-making-kissing-noises-at-work kind of way.  So, I tried to hurry off the phone.

Apparently, phone kisses combined with comfort food worked wonders.  This is the last report I got from home:

Conserving Energy

Let's assume that God made us and said something like, "you have 1 billion units of energy (or however energy is measured, I'm not a scientist) to last you your entire lifetime." 

Well, we waste a lot of it doing really pointless crap as children, and we laugh at adults who say things like, "I wish I had some of your energy" because, as children, we think we'll feel that tireless forever.

Last night, I watched Silas expend an exorbitant amount of energy climbing up onto the furniture, then immediately climbing back down, then climbing back up, dropping his sippy, exclaiming "uh oh!", climbing back down (repeat x 50). 

If my above assumption were true, and my son were any indication, it would stand to reason that we clearly use up about 500 million units (I'll even do the math for you - that's half) of our energy by the time we reach our 25th  birthdays between the pointless kid stuff (spinning in circles for an hour) and the all-nighters in our early 20's.

I'm nearing 30, and I'm certain I've already used half of my allotted energy for my lifetime.  And that is why I should be allowed to take a nap every day.  Energy conservation.