I am becatted. Neither coffee nor book are within reach. Send help.

I've actually been really productive for a Sunday: washed a sink full of dishes, made the bed, took a walk, did a load of towels (which are now done and folded and put away), bread is rising to bake in about an hour, and I'm finishing editing an article.

I deserve a cookie.

Yes, you do.

Oh, no, aurelia! Cruel cruel cat to trap you so.

Why would a recipe call for one part of one thing and 1.5 parts of the other instead of 2 of the first and 3 of the second? It makes no sense.

I have escaped. I had one cat on my lap and one between me and the back of the chair, so I couldn't even lean back and nap. Tapping at the phone was disturbing enough to Rosie that she eventually let me up so she could take my place on the chair.

I should think about dinner, get the recycling out to the bin, and see if the laundry room is available.

I wanted to be productive this weekend, but the ground is frozen solid, so the only yard work I was able to do was raking the remaining leaves out of the corner of the yard where all the leaves live. The compost is a solid block of decomposing ice inside the barrel, and I can't even open the door where you put more raw materials in. The weeds will just have to wait until the ground has thawed enough to use my soil knife.

Yesterday we went to a maple sugaring demonstration at a local nature preserve, and all the buckets were empty because it was below freezing and no sap was flowing. The guide finally found one bucket with a block of frozen sap in the bottom, and let everyone swipe it with a finger for a taste. The demonstration in the sugar house was her explaining that she'd had to let the fire go out because the pans were in danger of boiling dry. (We did get to sample some syrup that had been made a few weeks ago, when we had that freak warm spell. It was AWESOME.)

I lost yesterday to flat-out depression (semi tied to my 50th birthday coming up, I think), and seriously slept most of the day aside from finishing a book.

Today was work, which was grueling, but I'm still on "go" from it, so I've been productive since I got home. Yay.

Also, I now want maple syrup and a cat in my lap.

Also, I now want maple syrup and a cat in my lap.

Me too.

I'm now paying for letting my current class get away from me. I was on a roll earlier but I've been stuck for the last while. That happened once I realized I'd misread part of the assignment and I had to rework a chunk of what I'd already written. Thankfully I could keep most of it, just tweak it here or there. But now I'm stuck.

I'm so glad I have a week off before my next class. Happy Spring Break to me (after midnight that is).

Just make sure you don't end up with maple syrup in your lap!

I'm sorry, Amy.

I found out today that some paperwork I'd been stressed out about losing since Wednesday, stressed to the point of having physical stress symptoms show up - was right there all along. I had a couple staff members looking to help me find it. They tried to telk me it was right there, but I had convinced myself that the ones they found were previous month's copies. Then one of them said, "look, you signed off on it on Feb. 8, that's the most recent one. You didn't lose your mind or your paperwork, you just got ahead of yourself." I've been losing sleep, worrying about this stuff. When she told me that, I did that laugh/cry thing. Then I went and took a nap to make up for the lost sleep.

And now I have lasagna that just came out of the oven. It's got spinach in it, so it's totally healthy.