Yikes, Shir.

I’ve been staying at my sisters and visiting my dad. He keeps the tv on Fox News all day long. They keep it on MSNBC all day long. It’s a bit trippy to go back and forth.

I have been away for nearly a week!! We took off for New Orleans at 6 AM on Friday and didn’t get back until midnight on Monday, and I didn’t even bring a laptop! I posted some pictures via FB from time to time from my phone, but doing much of anything on my phone makes my eyes very unhappy. It did make me realize that a few tech free days from time to time is a good plan. Didn’t really watch any tv or catch any news either. Nice! Of course I have been crazed since we got back.

New Orleans was a delight. I checked off everything on my short list. First smonster hugs, also on the list was shrimp & grits because you can’t trust it here, then some pimento cheese which is available here, but I associate it with New Orleans. The weather was good, but the walking kinda treacherous for my tricky hip. I did manage to walk over 3 miles a day, so more steps than I have done recently. I did my PT every day, but between the walking and all the PT my hip was super mad at me by the time I got home.

Went to the doctor yesterday and he gave me another pain killer to try. He thinks I should be able to tolerate this one. Let’s hope. I don’t like the notion of taking them daily for the foreseeable future, but the pain has to go.

This morning we had to take Skinner to the vet. We picked him up from our friend Tuesday morning. He had been fine while he was there, but only at a couple bites of breakfast and wasn’t interested in more. Since then big digestive issues. We were afraid he had a blockage, because he will eat anything. Did the tests and brought the vet a sample of stuff. Vet bets he ate something like iguana poop and got ecoli. Lab will tell more, but treating him with that assumption. X-ray showed no block, so at least he didn’t eat a tennis ball. Dogs!

And now the meara since I was about 100 posts behind…

And the raise does pretty much cover my water bill, so that's something sort of tangible.

One who exceeds expectations should drink for free.

I expect Isabella will feel blindsided and betrayed by the news.

No doubt, but her grief over the impending loss of her mother will likely overwhelm that response in the short term. Her response could be brutal, but I hope she can find some understanding of her mother's state of denial.

I had my doctor's appointment and I my blood pressure was high.

Yes, you need to take it seriously. I found that active stress reduction techniques help. I even listed to binaural beats in the background. Watchful diet. Sleep! All that stuff we are supposed to do.

Lasagna is a perfect example of that kind of meal. You can make a pot of chili, or stew.

Mmmm, lasagna! My only means of success is planning out my week of menus over the weekend, ordering pickup of groceries, then following the plan. I love to cook, but the part of deciding what to eat tonight is torture for me so having a calendar to look at that tells me zucchini pizza or whatever tonight takes that part out of the equation.

Matilda texted me from school with a picture of herself with tears streaming down her face.

There is no date that you can predict it will stop. Even many years later something can sneak up and bring on the tears. I was much older than Matilda when I lost my parents. It is surely another level of grief when you are at an age of such high emotional response. My heart hurts for all of you. (I lost my mom 8 years ago when I was 62, and yesterday when I was driving home from the doctor my brain sent me a message that I needed to call mom and update her. Brains be weird.)

Here I'm starting to realize that the current level of executive function is pretty much what I have to work with and its not going to return to normal (pre war level). War (and resisting it) takes a lot of energy.

Functioning at anything approaching normal level has to be nearly impossible in the midst of war. Thinking of you and sending ~ma every day for sanity to emerge.

Hi all!

I’ve been staying at my sisters and visiting my dad. He keeps the tv on Fox News all day long. They keep it on MSNBC all day long. It’s a bit trippy to go back and forth.

So you get all the scoop on the Biden Impeachment and the Trump Trials! I've tried to really limit how much I read or listen too. So repetitive.

Yeah, the US deciding who should be running the US has not been stellar but the US deciding who should be running other countries has historically been really very bad

Totally(on both counts)

Y'all, my department is hiring 3 new people (one is actually already hired, starting 4/1) all managers. So we're going from 6 managers and 13 non to 9 managers and 13 non. My team will be 3 managers and me. It all seems super weird.

That sounds super efficient. They should increase the number of meetings just to make even more sense.

Well, we have been told to have more formal 1:1s, so...

Welcome back, Laura!

That's weird, -t, WTF?

It is super windy here today, and we went out for a spontaneous late lunch, and I spilled a drink of soda on myself, and even though the back "porch" where we were wasn't super windy, the wet, the slightly windy, and then the flaky mascara started to drive me up a wall... in an I'm a toddler who can't handle sock seams.kind of way... so we boxed up and headed out. First half was great, though!

Now we're back inside where it is pleasantly not windy. And back to work I go...

My dad finally had his sleep study yesterday. We were expecting to get results in 3-4 weeks because they're understaffed and backed up, but the results came back today so I guess they were as conclusive as we knew they would be. Next steps: wrangling his regular doctors for a CPAP.

I'm going to try to get away from work for a bit to take myself for walkies in the sunshine.