Much job-keeping~ma to Jilli and Kathy. Good advice to trust your gut, JZ. Hopefully your next interview will rock!

Sox, I'm totally in for Saturday!

Robin, that is an adorable house. Yay for Aimee and Joe on achieving independence!

vw, I'm sorry for your community's loss. Hope it wasn't arson either.

I think that's it. My brain is broken. Tomorrow my car needs to be inspected (go Team Last Minute!) where I hope they find nothing wrong. Might need brake pads though. Let's hope for not right now. Too much money being spent willy-nilly!

After I got out of the building tonight I realized that I should have left much MUCH earlier. Practically cried from the tension being released.

Got to class, told my instructor [link] what had happened. Told him I needed him to hurt me. [link]

There were only four of us in class.

He did.

I feel much, much, better.

Then one of my classmates took me out for a drink. I got grapefruit juice. Sick. Sick. Sick.

So my friend Karen had surgery today. The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes so those came out too. The oncologist is recommending an aggressive chemotherapy course.

None of this is particularly good news. Oncology is a lot like Kremlinology - you have to learn to read the signs.

Or if you prefer a poker analogy, when the cards came up on the flop her odds went down.

Still too early to be dire, but it could've been better.

I'm venting my gloom here so I don't get it near her. But she's a smart gal and has done her research so she knows the score anyway.

I'm sorry, David. I hope the chemo does it's job without too much side-effects.

I hope the chemo does it's job without too much side-effects.

I think the side effects are a given, so I'll settle for doing its job. Thanks.

I really really want her here for Matilda's sixth birthday and beyond.

Chemo~ma for Karen.

I'm so sorry, David. I really don't have enough words to express how much I hate cancer.

Fuck, David. Also, what Susan said.

I thought the happy belonged in a different post...

My MIL is visiting for the week, and since I have very little vacation to spare, I've been going to work while DH, MIL, and Annabel have been spending the days together. Today I came home, after posting those pirate costumes, to discover that they'd bought her a set of pirate accessories at Pottery Barn kids--she now has hat, plush sword, eyepatch, and a hook. She put them all on and informed me she was a BAD pirate. She also has pirate sheets and a little throw pillow with a patchwork tall ship sailing across the sea.

I think it's fair to conclude she's my daughter.

I do have tomorrow off, because this weekend is the 10th anniversary of DH and I first meeting and our 8th wedding anniversary. We're going to leave Annabel with her grandma for two nights and go here.

I can totally vouch for the coolness of pirate halloweens. I think four of Emmett's first six halloween costumes were pirates (one of them a zombie pirate).