Work — Co-workers are leaving the department like rats deserting a sinking ship. By the time I hit my 1-year anniversary in mid-May, I will be 11th in seniority, in a department of approximately 26 people. I was highly complimented by a couple of my leads encouraging me to apply for the upcoming lead opening. I told them no; I like my day shift too much to switch to four 10-hour swing shifts. Anyway, when I said I wasn’t applying for the lead position, one of my leads replied, “Okay, but please just don’t leave the department!” It was said with no little bit of urgency, which was a lovely compliment.

Home — I got the coat closet completely cleaned out and organized. (Exciting, eh?) And got an emergency food & water supply set up in case of natural disaster, the collapse of civilization, or zombie wars. By Monday night, I will have a California king-sized platform captain’s bed with a brand-new mattress and 4 brand-new pillows (purchased today). Dustin bought the bedframe a few months ago, but since he & Angst got a new place with a smaller bedroom, he offered to trade it for the nice & cushiony (but not huge) futon that Geoffrey & I have (plus, of course, the nice sheets that fit that bed). New sheets from EgyptianPeddler are on their way (to make Geoffrey smile, we got black…with 2 black pillowcases and 2 burgundy).

Health — It took over 3 weeks, but I seem to be finally recovered from the horrendous ick. I was so sick, I didn’t see Karel for damned near a month. On the upside, being sick enough to do little more than sit meant I got a ton of crocheting done.

Offspring (mine) — Everything seems to be going well. As far as I can tell.

Offspring (not mine) — Jonathan finally cut some teeth, just yesterday! He’s still the sweetest, most adorable, most delightful little boy ever. Also the quietest baby I’ve ever known; he doesn’t babble constantly like most babies of not-quite 9-months old, just makes the occasional pronouncement of a nonsense syllable or two when he’s done thinking about something. He’s also one of the most affectionate kids I’ve ever seen. He just loves to throw himself at you for hugs. He also loves to pet the kitties, without too much grabbing at them…Hasani will usually put up with it for several minutes.

Men (mine) — I have incredibly fabulous lovers, who have been wonderful in putting up with my whining about being sick for the last 3+ weeks, not to mention my inability to be a tigress in bed due to constant coughing and sniffling.

Men (not mine) — I’ve been re-reading my books on polyamory, which helps remind me that I have incredibly fabulous lovers. So hey, the NRE is long gone…c’est la vie, and all that. At least I’m not frequently in tears or a raging fury over the asshattery of some guy I’m involved with. Thank the gods.

Sex — My love life is (still) like a fusion reactor: incredibly hot, immensely powerful, and mostly theoretical.

Friends — I’ve come to the conclusion that pretty much everyone I really, really like is someone who (with rare exception) pretty much doesn’t like people. Friends who help you avoid becoming hermits altogether, but who understand why you might be inclined to do so, are invaluable!

Critters — Lyse is going to the South to visit her mom for about 10 days, starting late next week. This means I’ll have 5 cats in the house during that time…should be quite exciting. The 2 boy hamsters got out of their cage, then unbeknownst to us ate something poisonous to them before they were recaptured, and both died the next day (for yet another rodent funerary rite in the side yard). The gerbil, and surviving hamster, are too freaking adorable, and fun to play with. The lizard is shedding and irritable fairly often, but likes to eat greens out of my hand, and is very happy with his new stone corner platform that I got for his cage. The bunny has shed so much recently that I swear he’s hiding another 3 or 4 bunnies somewhere! We clipped his nails, which he hates, but he seems a lot happier for it.

Netflix — I have gotten through many, many documentaries on the Dark Ages and the Anglo-Saxons, most of which were quite good (and just a couple of which were loathsome). Next batch in the queue is the Vikings and the Crusades, followed by a bunch on the history of British royals (yes, all of them). And then a bunch of American history. (I’m trying to stay at least vaguely chronological.)

Crocheting — I’m about 3/4 done with the enormous blue & black afghan that I’ve spent most of the last month working on, which Angst desperately wants to have. I still have to finish my green filet crochet of Celtic knotwork, a purple shawl-type thing I’m making for my grandmother’s birthday in early May, and the purple artsy-spirals thing I’m planning on making into a wall decoration. There are probably more unfinished projects…I just can’t remember what else I have going. At least I haven’t started making the socks, or the thread crochet skirt, that I’ve already bought the yarn for! The good news is, I virtually always finish my crochet projects…sometimes it just takes 3 or 4 years (like that granny squares afghan I made for Lyse).

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print.

We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day just a smidgen early this year…

The corned beef went into the crockpot very early this morning. I’d never done corned beef in a crockpot, so it promised to be an interesting experiment. Now that I have, I’ll never cook it another way again. (Here’s the recipe: Put meat & spices in crockpot. Just barely cover with water. Put it on high for 6 hours. Then add cabbage and carrots, and potatoes if desired. Add hot water to just barely cover the cabbage, and put it on high for 2-3 more hours, depending on how well done you like your veggies.)

I also baked Irish soda bread. FROM SCRATCH. I don’t normally bake (or cook, if I can help it) so I was surprised that it turned out as well as it did. Lyse told me 5 or 6 times that it was scrumptious. (Here’s the recipe: Mix 4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 2 teaspoons salt in a large bowl. Add 1 pint buttermilk. Stir until just moistened. Knead only until dough holds together fairly well. Form into a ball, place in pie pan and smoosh it so the top is flat. With a knife dipped in flour, cut an X across the top — if it doesn’t have the X, it’s not authentic Irish soda bread! Bake covered at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, then bake uncovered for another 15 minutes. Best either fresh out of the oven, or cooked the day before and stored loosely covered overnight.)

We also had crackers and Irish cheese (Dubliner, which was a bit hit with everyone, and Blarney Castle, which I liked but everyone else said tasted like anise). And cupcakes with green frosting…because there’s just something about green frosting that makes me smile.

Geoffrey and Lyse spent last night at the VA emergency room, since Lyse re-injured her back and could barely move. I spent all day yesterday (and a good chunk of the night, too) doing laundry and crocheting…but all the laundry in the house is clean! Then today there was cooking, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning out all the critters’ cages and clipping Bun-Bun’s nails (which he HATES), cooking, and cleaning the kitchen. Have I mentioned how much I hate cooking? (But I did get another corned beef, to have next weekend for the vernal equinox. Because I have always looooved corned beef.) I think I slept enough this weekend that I’m on the tail end of being sick — I almost felt healthy today.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Despite having a few days off last week to help recover from whatever hellish ick that I caught, I was still sick all this week. Including today. (The rest of this is just about being sick, and miscellaneous work stuff, so only people who really really like me will give a damn. Everyone else, continue surfing elsewhere.)

And now for something completely TMI…

So, last week completely sucked. I went to work Monday, no prob. Then I got a phone call Monday evening that graveyard had called in, the on-call person’s phone number was disconnected, and they’d already called everyone more junior to me (which is something like 11 or 12 people now) and they’d all said no. Trying to be a good little worker (and having been offered the rest of Tuesday off if I would just do an 8-hour shift starting at midnight), I said, “Sure, I’ll come in and work another shift.” By the time I got off work Tuesday morning — having been awake for nearly 29 hours straight — I was so wiped out, it was a freaking miracle that I made it home safely.

Wednesday morning, I arrived at work. Within 3 hours, my throat was in so much pain that I was almost crying every time I had to answer the line…which was approximately every 20 seconds. So I begged for mercy, and went home sick. Anxiety was home sick, as well — I’d wanted her to stay home on Monday & Tuesday, but she insisted she was well enough to go to school; however, I made her stay home on Wednesday because she looked (and sounded!) like death warmed over. So I called the clinic and got us both in to be looked at that afternoon.

The good news was that it wasn’t strep. The bad news was that they didn’t actually know what it was, because it didn’t seem to be “just” a cold. Neither of us had fevers, so they weren’t going to give us antibiotics because it probably wasn’t bacterial. They threw some Claritin-D at Anxiety (on the theory that she had allergies), some anti-inflammatory meds at me (on the theory that I had laryngitis), and sent us packing. Luckily, I also got an official doctor’s note to be off work for the rest of the week, for which I am desperately grateful.

I’ve been on NyQuil 24/7 since Wednesday morning. I’ve gone through 2+ boxes of kleenex due to my runny nose. I’ve been sucking mentholated cough drops like candy due to my incessant cough. Today was the first day that I didn’t feel like the thundering wildebeests of the Serengeti had stampeded on all my muscles while I slept. I haven’t been eating much because I can’t smell anything at all, and so nothing tastes appealing in the least (except ice cream…which I’ve probably had a bit too much of, but it soothes the sore throat). That really alarmed me — I never lose my sense of smell, no matter how sick I am!

On the bright side, I also did 90% of the laundry on Wednesday before collapsing into a soggy, sniffling mess, and I’ve gotten a TON of crocheting done on my most recent asinine project (2-color king-sized afghan… sure, why not? *smack head into keyboard*). I also found out that Lion Brand yarn has hundreds of FREE knitting and crocheting patterns online! Ooh, shiny! (Don’t even ask me how much I spend on crochet pattern books annually. It’s painful.)

Hopefully this week will be much, much better…I’ll be deliriously happy if my nose will just stop running. I can tolerate (or at least be resigned to) the rest of being sick, but a runny nose is so utterly disgusting.

Today marks the anniversary of two similar occasions:

Thirty-seven years ago, I became a sister. My mother tells an amusing anecdote about this, as follows… I was 21 months old when my baby sister came into the world. My mother had spent some time, prior to the blessed event, gearing me up for big-sisterhood. She explained about how small & helpless babies are, and that they cry instead of talking, and all the other things a parent might say to a toddler to help them integrate a new sibling into their lives. For the first few weeks of my sister’s life, my mother never left us alone together (because, of course, a 21-month-old child should never be unsupervised in any case!). But one day she ran into the kitchen to take something out of the oven (or something like that), leaving us alone for less than 30 seconds, and soon heard the distinct sound of flesh striking flesh, followed by a wailing newborn. She dashed back into the room to see a small red handprint on the baby’s face, and a very self-satisfied smile on mine.

As near as she could figure out, although she’d talked about the baby coming home from the hospital, she’d never mentioned to me that the baby wasn’t “just visiting” — that it was a permanent addition to the family. And I’d finally realized this smelly, noisy, aggravating creature was not going back to the hospital…so I expressed my feelings on the matter quite directly.

And thirty-six years ago today, Karel was born — the man who would become one of my most trusted and beloved friends, as well as the second-longest romantic relationship of my life (not to mention one of the two healthiest and happiest romantic relationships of my life!). I’ll try to refrain from gushing too much, but I do want to say that I can’t imagine life without his delightful company, ardent affection, solid friendship, insightful wisdom, exquisite sensuality, and wonderfully deranged humor.