Here I Am, Right Where I Left Myself

It is simply unacceptable that I've let myself go so long without writing--nearly two years! My typing skills have been deteriorating before my eyes, so some practice is long overdue.

And anyway, I could use the therapy.

As I'm writing this, I find myself in a situation similar to when I last wrote: the still somewhat raw phase of grieving the loss of a dear friend.

Just over three weeks ago, we lost Ryan's cat Perch...suddenly. She'd had very early signs of kidney disease, and we'd been treating her for a couple of months. Ryan was taking her to the vet three times a week for fluids, and she'd recently started a treatment that we hoped would correct her anemia, which was at the time our main concern. He appetite was back; she was her old self--friendly, affectionate and ever curious. Her last scheduled trip to the vet went well. She got another injection for her anemia, and blood tests showed her red blood cells were back in normal range!

The following evening, Ryan came home to find she couldn't lift her head. The doctor at the emergency clinic attributed it to a lack of potassium and started her on a slow drip overnight to correct it. She spent the following day with her regular veterinarian, who made phone calls and consulted with colleagues and basically searched high and low for an explanation for her sudden decline. I rushed to Oklahoma City early that afternoon to be with her and Ryan, and when I arrived we went straight to the clinic. All I wanted was to see her with my own eyes, and I felt a rush of hope when I saw her reach out a paw toward Ryan.

We didn't know it at the time, but this was the last we'd see of Perch as we knew her.

Having left her again in the vet's capable care, we were out having dinner that evening when Ryan got a call from the vet telling us to come right away. Within the hour, she had passed away peacefully, with the doctor petting her and monitoring her condition closely, and with Ryan and me at her side.

Just like that, our little angel was gone.

There are so many details, so many emotions and memories that are too sacred to share here. The pain was all the more unbearable because we weren't at all prepared to say goodbye. And I grieved not only for my loss, but for Ryan's too. She was his best buddy, his constant companion. When he sat at his desk, she would get in his lap and put her paws on the desk, occasionally batting at the keyboard. She followed him everywhere, happy just to be with him and to be in the middle of whatever he was doing.

When I would leave him after staying for the weekend, I never worried about Ryan getting sad or lonely; he had Perch to look after him.

There was another component to it as well, and I'm just realizing it now that some time has passed.

When I lost Sunshine, it was a long drawn out process: months of constant anxiety over her appetite, her medication, and her quality of life. There was the weight of deciding when to end her suffering. Would I make it too soon? Would I wait too long? How much more could she and I take?

When you're taking care of someone day in and day out, you don't necessarily have the "luxury" of falling apart. I had to be strong for her and make the best of the time we had left...and that's what I did. But when it was finally time to say goodbye, I didn't quite know how to stop being strong.

I felt lost without her, but I also felt relief...I was tired and just needed to rest, to recover physically, mentally and emotionally. Perhaps I had grieved little bits over a long period of time while she was sick; perhaps I didn't have much left when I finally let her go. All I know is that Ryan's cats Perch and Mary Hartman lifted me up during this time.

So did my boys. But they were so different from Sunshine...big and boisterous and loud. Sunshine and I understood each other on a deep level; we each knew instinctively what the other needed or wanted, and we  went with the ebb and flow of each day like it was a flawless dance. We were twin souls. 

I never have had and probably never will have the exact same kind of relationship with my boys, and that's okay. But I took comfort in spending time with Ryan's little ladies. I delighted in watching them move around in their dainty little bodies, flirtatious and coy. I enjoyed the nuances of their calmer dispositions, which seemed distinctively female in nature. I fell in love with them both, all over again.

I'm seeing now that Perch especially helped me during that time, and I'm realizing that I began to rely on her for something very important. What it was specifically, I can't quite pinpoint. Joy? Optimism? "Girl time?" Whatever it was, when I lost her the bottom dropped out.

Although I feel lost without her, I find comfort in believing she is still with us; she is our guardian angel. I always believed she truly was some sort of angel who had taken the form of a cat and was sent here especially for Ryan when he needed her most. Now, I'm more certain than ever that this is true, and that these days she's more free to move around and do her work. 

Perhaps some time I'll elaborate on that theory. But for now, I'm going to get my boys their dinner and give them kisses and start some of the house work I've been putting off. 

Thanks, Internet, for letting me share my thoughts. Thanks, Friends, for reading them.

A New Normal

I'm having a very lazy weekend--home alone with nothing to do except some much-needed cleaning. So naturally, I'm suddenly very interested in blogging.

Life has shifted into a different gear of late, I can't really say things are better or worse. Work is going fine, and I still feel I'm in a place I could happily stay for a while--though I have concluded I don't love being an administrative assistant and probably never will.

I am angling for another promotion that would be a solid step closer to the professional level. We had a couple of openings when one person left the department and another was promoted. The first opening was filled by a guy whose previous position was eliminated. I was quite relieved to learn that for him this was considered a lateral move and he did not get a raise, because I work circles around the guy on a daily basis. The other position is still open, and there seems to be some mysterious delay in filling it.

My supervisor's words were "I am facing a lot of complex staffing issues, so I can't make any promises, but I am definitely keeping you in mind." Not very encouraging, but I'm holding out hope.

We're undergoing several huge changes right now: our manager retired, and my former supervisor was promoted to replace him; our Denver office is being consolidated with Tulsa, so we have a few people relocating and several more needing to be replaced; we are in the middle of moving the entire department to a different floor; and our department is in early stages of spinning off into its own company. Any of these changes alone would be a big transition, and they're all happening at once. I must say everyone as a whole is handling the stress surprisingly well.

I must also say that I absolutely hate moving!

On to a sadder topic, I lost my old girl Sunshine about a month ago. She was wasting away, and the days she seemed to enjoy life were getting fewer and farther between. So the vet came to our house and put her to sleep peacefully while I held her in my arms. I try not to remember those last moments too often, but when I do remember, I'm stunned that I was able to do it.

I was strong for her, and when it was over I felt relief for her. But for me, there was just a big hole left behind. Sometimes it felt like there was a physical hole right in the middle of my chest. I'm getting past the shock now, but I still think of her every single day, and I never go to bed at night without noticing she's not next to me.

There is a lot of comfort in the fact that I'm able to focus more attention on my three boys now. I really felt like I was neglecting them over the last several months, but now they sleep with me every night and I don't have to divide my attention between different cats in different rooms. It's an adjustment, going from sharing a bed with a quiet, elderly female cat to sharing it with three big, rambunctious tabbies. But I'm so grateful to have them!

Back to Sunshine, I am proud to say that she put up a hell of a fight against that nasty cancer. And she still had some fight left in her at the end. The vet had to give her a sedative before the sedative so they could put in an IV, and I held her, wrapped in a towel, while the first sedative took effect. My feisty girl growled quietly until she couldn't growl anymore, making me laugh through my tears.

I am still searching for just the right tribute to her...nothing seems quite fitting. I certainly don't have it in me yet to put into writing everything she means to me. But for now I keep a picture of her by my bed, right next to where she used to sleep.

And I will always carry a little bit of Sunshine--especially her stormy side--in my heart.

This and That

Yeah, I know--it's been forever since I blogged. Don't think I haven't missed it. But when things are going well, it seems that urge to write has a lot less fire behind it.

Things have been going well in a lot of ways, and as of December I have a new job with the same company where I started working as a file room temp last summer. I'm now an Administrative Assistant, which is something I never saw myself doing; I've always felt it has an element of baby-sitting grown-ups to it. And it does, but only in small quantities. 

I'm on a different team in the same department, so I already knew the people I would be working with before I moved. They're a very hard-working group, and generally just damn nice, likable people. I hear some of them are a bit gossipy, but as long as no one tries to drag me into that, I don't care. My boss is great...she's nothing close to being a micro-manager, and in fact she's really good about trusting people with their responsibilities. But at the same time, she knows what's going on!

Getting hired on permanently couldn't have come at a better time, because I got paid for all the days off we had over the holidays. And when life happens, I have paid time off immediately available to me. It's so weird!

Life has been happening, for sure. Last November Sunshine started acting strange, like she was hurt. Fearing another abscessed anal gland and an ensuing week of pure hell, I got her right to the vet. But this time she had a bite wound--A BITE WOUND!--on her butt that had gotten infected. I don't know who did it, but George is the most likely suspect. Poor Sunshine has been in complete and blissful seclusion ever since, and I think sometimes she forgets she's not an only cat. She's definitely much happier with the boys out of her life.

She bounced back pretty quickly from the bite, but that was only the beginning of the story. While she was sedated to have the bite looked at, one of the vet techs noticed a red lump on her belly that looked very suspicious. We decided that after she recovered from her bite and felt better, she needed to have it looked at more closely. First they did a cytology, probably sometime in December. They ended up not sending it off to the lab because they couldn't tell much from it and they felt I should instead spend the money on a full biopsy.

By the time I'd gathered the money to have the lump removed, things had apparently gotten much worse--or the first vet hadn't been sufficiently alarmed in the first place. The new vet did some chest x-rays and found the growth had spread to Sunshine's lungs, which explained the terrible cough she'd suddenly developed. The vet was almost certain it was mammary cancer, which in cats can be extremely aggressive and almost impossible to cure--especially at the stage she had reached.

We went ahead with the surgery just after the new year, and the vet removed as much abnormal tissue as she could find. The biopsy didn't tell us much, but it did confirm our fears: cancer. The vet (who has been absolutely wonderful through everything) advised me there was no way to tell when the cancer would come back, but it almost certainly would. It could be a matter of days, weeks or months, she said.

Of course I was devastated, but in the time since this began, I've coped by keeping my focus on doing everything I can to make Sunshine as comfortable and happy as possible. She's taking water pills to keep fluid out of her lungs, and that helps her coughing. She's lost a lot of weight, and the meds seem to make her feel pretty sick at times. She has completely stopped eating a couple of times--the last episode lasted five days. But as soon as I stopped giving her all the meds (by then she was also taking an appetite stimulant and something for nausea) she suddenly became ravenous again.

Back on the water pills now, she seems to be losing her appetite again. I'm going to have to talk to the vet about whether it's really worth it to keep giving her this stuff. The good news is that in all of this I've finally found a way to medicate my little banshee.

This pill shooter is THA BOMB. It's a godsend. The ones I found at Petco and PetSmart were too big for tiny cat pills, but my vet recommended this one, which she was selling much cheaper than any others I've found. This thing has saved my relationship with Sunshine.

We are enjoying each other's company every minute we can, and on the days she's feeling well she is very happy and affectionate. There are days when I'm so depressed I can barely move, and they seem to coincide with the days she seems sickest. She is my best friend, and I can't imagine my life without her. But I'm so thankful we have this time together. There's no telling how long it will last, but I'm going to make the best of it.

I haven't been to Oklahoma City with Ryan since the New Year, and that truly sucks. But he's been very supportive and completely understands why I can't leave my cat to go out of town these days. Unfortunately, with a snowpocalypse preceded by two terrible colds, he hasn't been able to get here either for several weeks. I'm definitely looking forward to next weekend, when By God nothing better stop my man from getting to me! It will have been a month since we've seen each other, and that's the longest we've ever been apart since we met.

I'm looking forward to returning to work tomorrow...I haven't been in almost a week because of a very unusual blizzard and our mayor's complete lack of competence to handle the situation. Dude declared a state of emergency before the first snowflake even fell, and yet a week later people are still snowed in and the roads are a mess. I just know people who live up North are laughing at us...

Uphill Both Ways

My, how the last month has flown by!  I got in lots of great time with my nephews, planted an herb garden, spent some long weekends with Ryan, and got a sunburn that won't quit...and then I started a new job, just three weeks after my previous employer kicked me out of the loony bin.

The new job is just a filing job, but it's with a company that has a great reputation in Tulsa and is known for hiring on temps pretty quickly, with good pay and superb benefits.  Even as a temp, I'm getting the same hourly pay as my last job, and this new job is easier by far.  Everyone I've met is friendly and helpful, and I haven't heard a single person say (or even hint at) anything unfavorable about anyone else in the office.  The only down side is that it can get boring, but I offer to help with anything and everything whenever I get the chance.  The boss has already given me a couple of projects, and hopefully she'll keep them coming.

The whole experience has been quite a shock to my system, in the best possible way.  Sometimes while I'm sitting at my desk alone, listening to music as I put stickers on file folders, I wonder why no one has come along to tell me I'm doing it wrong and that I should do it his or her way because he or she knows all about the most efficient way to put stickers on file folders...

...and then I remember where I am.

It's been a bit of a pain in the ass getting to and from the largest office building downtown, right in the middle of everything.  But I kind of like the fact that it's right in the middle of everything - downtown Tulsa actually has its own special kind of charm!  I'm looking forward to getting out for some walks to explore it more once this inferno of a summer lets up a little.

I've never worked in a place that didn't have its own (free) parking lot before, so it took me a while to figure out my options.  But I've found a really cheap place to park just a couple of blocks away.  The walk is literally uphill both ways, as it involves crossing a bridge that arches over some train tracks.  Given my history of being never-quite-on-time, it's probably going to be quite a brisk walk most mornings!

It's not terribly strenuous, but--combined with a couple of pretty good treks to the cafeteria (seriously, the building is huge)--it's notably more activity than I'm used to.  Hopefully this will have a positive impact on my beer gut.

In other exciting news, last weekend I finally attended a volunteer orientation at the SPCA here in Tulsa...only a short five months after I first filled out my application.  It's going to be a little difficult finding time to get out there, because they're not open in the evenings or on Sunday.  And of course I'm out of town at least half the time on Saturdays.

But I'm really going to make the effort, because I know it'll be worth it.  I was grinning like a fool after the orientation, so the animal time is clearly something my soul craves.

Getting some cat time in won't be too hard.  I can just put on my SPCA t-shirt and go play with the cats whenever I have time.  To work with the dogs, though, I'll have to schedule some additional required training first. And I'm really eager to do that, because I've been wanting to learn how to handle dogs for a long time.  And it's not like you can just go sign up for a class at PetSmart if you don't actually have a dog...

In all, things really seem to be looking up.  I feel renewed and refreshed and all that great stuff, and I'm pretty sure it's all because I got out of the most hostile work environment I've ever seen.  It was kind of like an abusive relationship...I'd gotten so used to being treated like shit that I got in the habit of keeping my head down and avoiding conflict until it actually started to seem normal. 

It wasn't until I got away and came to my senses that I looked back with horror at how much abuse I had learned to put up with.

Never again, my friends.  Never again.

Vacation

Apparently the side effects of a highly toxic job are beginning to dissipate.  I made it past the shocked and depressed stage and have been remarkably relaxed all week.  I had lunch with my former co-worker (who's now my fellow deadbeat), spent some time at the pool, did some gardening and scoped out the thrift stores.  It's been a good week.

I'm feeling pretty restless again today, probably because I need to do some house work and wish there was something more pressing to keep me from it.

Tonight I'm going out for drinks with my former coworker and an attorney who also got laid off recently. But if I don't do some laundry, I'm not going to have anything to wear!

My mom is keeping my nephews during the day all summer...this week their mom is on vacation, but next week they'll be back and things will pick up tremendously.  Charlie is still the bubbly kid who can't sit still and requires a constant audience.  Talon, on the other hand, has become a sullen 11-year-old who hides behind long blonde locks and doesn't want to play or talk or do anything but sleep and watch TV.  He's too cool for Grandma's house, apparently!

It'll be nice to have some quality time with them...with their splitting time between divorced parents and my splitting time between Tulsa and OKC, I haven't been able to see them nearly enough lately.

What You Wish For

It appears that--for the time being, at least--I'm through writing blog entries about how much I hate my job. That's the good news.

The bad news is I'm back to writing endless posts about the angst of job searching.

I was laid off last Wednesday.  I saw this coming, and I was hoping for it...hoping very hard, in fact.  So I can't explain why it threw me for such a loop or why I've spent the last few days in a state of depression, confusion and shock.

We'd already been told we'd have to start taking two furlough days a month, and everyone was pretty discouraged by that.  It took over a week for someone to find time to speak to us face to face about the furlough days and other cuts, and by then I was thoroughly disgusted.  Summer vacations combined with everyone's furlough days made big cuts in our staffing on a daily basis, and the boss was managing it all terribly, as usual.

Then a couple of attorneys suddenly vanished.  And two days before the bomb dropped, I learned one of my coworkers was training some CSRs to do my job.  I thought that was poor timing and pretty tacky, but I chalked it up to one of my boss's crazy ideas on how to manage the staffing shortages caused by furlough days.  I was past caring at this point, and way past anger, so I didn't think much more about it.

The next day my closest coworker and I couldn't log in to the system and therefore couldn't do much of anything.  Our boss told us someone in the corporate office had accidentally deleted our login IDs, and that the only person who could fix it was out of the office for the day.  She proceeded to print off a bunch of intakes for us to work from, a ridiculous solution as our system is used to track every step of the process, note every phone call and record every change of status.  A slogan we often heard was "If it's not noted in the intake, it didn't happen."

So I guess a lot of work didn't happen that day, and it was beyond frustrating, as the other two people who could do our job were off that day.  The boss, of course, was nowhere to be found, although her ass should have been helping us deal with the mess. 

Around 4pm, my coworker appeared with a pale face and said she'd been called into the boss's office.  At that point, I just gave up trying to work and waited with my stomach in knots.  Sure enough, she eventually reappeared with a tear in her eye and nodded...and I knew they were letting her go.

I was completely stunned, and all I could do was stand next to her desk thinking "NO!!!  It was supposed to be me!"

Then the boss came for me, and I felt an enormous relief.  I'm told the boss cried while breaking the news to my coworker, but I saw no tears when it was my turn and I certainly didn't shed any.  It was all a blur after that...we both quickly cleaned out our desks, said goodbye to everyone and went out for a beer.

I've spent the last few days moping, staring into space, and wondering why me?  But I'm getting past that phase now and starting to enjoy the prospect of waking up in the morning and NOT going back to a job that was slowly killing me.

I still don't quite know what to do with myself, but I guess now I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Career Development

It's been a while since I've written about work, and an update is overdue.  Mind you, nothing has changed much except my outlook. But, having finally adjusted my expectations, I'm able to enjoy the humor a bit more than I did before.

In the first week I was back from vacation, I essentially had to relearn my job, not once but twice.  The overall objective didn't change at all...just the specific steps and details to get it done.  On my first day back, I was handed new instructions and a new flow chart (the boss loves her flow charts). I spent a few days learning exactly what to put in subject fields of emails and in what order, when to forward vs. when to reply, and how to get things back on track when the attorneys didn't follow the precise instructions.

Meanwhile, I was starting to see signs the boss's recent calm streak was coming to an end as her lucidity began to deteriorate. She chewed out one of my coworkers about a box I put on the floor in my cubicle, asserting that someone could trip over it and get hurt, that she had asked her to put it in some other cubicle (which she didn't specify), and that when she asks someone to do something she expects it to be done.

Then one morning she arrived at my desk, breathless, her hair (which she recently chopped off close to her scalp) sticking up wildly, and told me to hold off doing anything until she took another look at her new instructions and then sent them to me.  Next we went from doing everything by email to eliminating the need for emails (but not really) altogether.

As I was learning the newest new process, she stopped by and informed me that her new way of doing things was going to save me so much time that she was going to be able to utilize me more, adding that she wanted me to help edit and update some training material.

"You're the obvious choice for it," she declared.

I didn't get excited, because by now I've learned that even if I was allowed to use any creativity or individual thought, she'd immediately squash it and I'd eventually go insane trying to do every little detail her way even though I could probably do it better on my own.  And I wasn't about to drag my beloved writing skills into this morbid cycle.

Fortunately, it turned out there was no writing or real editing involved at all.  Instead, I am going through her precious manifesto, editing the background colors and font sizes.  Some pages have blue backgrounds, some white.  Some have frighteningly huge fonts, and others look fairly normal.  All of them are wildly indented, capitalized and underlined in random places.  None of them remain coherent from beginning to end.

Apparently this project is going to open a whole new world for me.

Still Here...

I'm trying to decide on a new design for my blog, so what you're seeing now may or not be permanent.  Nothing seems to fit just right...

Just got back last week from a drive to and from Philly to attend the wedding of Eric & Sara.  We spent more time driving than we spent in Philly, but it was a really nice getaway.  The wedding was lovely, and though I didn't have a lot of time with Eric and Sara, I did get to see enough of them to hold me over until next time...and I got to catch up with lots of friends and former coworkers.

I think it's been long enough--enough time has passed--that it's not entirely crazy for me to say I kind of wish I could go back to work at TV Guide.  Only it's not TV Guide anymore.  But I ran into three or four people who left (some by choice, some not) and have now gone back...that's in addition to several others I already knew about, not to mention many others who've been a part of the same pattern for long as I've worked there. And no one is complaining.

I'd probably have to move back to PA, which isn't entirely out of the question on a long term basis...although it's presently not a real possibility.

Anyway, I had a great trip with Ryan, and before we even finished the grueling drive we were exitedly discussing another road trip to Ohio in the Fall.  And maybe a weekend in Chicago this summer.  Because there's just not much going on here.

Even though I've been back in Tulsa for over two years now, I've never really started a life here.  I've been too busy running around elsewhere, mainly to Oklahoma City, on weekends.  When I do have a weekend at home, it's nice to just be home.  So I'm sort of in a constant state of limbo.

Ryan and I remedy the situation by daydreaming about fun road trips or about running away to start new lives in Pennsylvania...or West Virginia...or who knows where. Truth be told, I'm not sure I'd care a whole lot where I ended up as long as we were together!

It's Something, At Least

I'm feeling especially disgruntled this week. I have that feeling, more than usual, that I should be doing something different...making some sort of change...anything to get out of the rut I'm in.

I've had that feeling so long I don't remember what it's like to feel any other way.

Most of the time I don't think about what a fucking idiot my boss is or how much I hate her. I just keep my head down and try not to take too much initiative or do anything else to bring on her wrath. For the most part it works; we rarely speak to each other. But every now and then something reminds me what a bitch she is, and I get really sulky.

If I ask her a question, instead of using an opportunity to teach me something she just takes the responsibility away and talks behind my back about how I don't know what I'm doing. If I ask someone else, she hears the conversation from her office and assails the person I spoke with, wanting to know what I asked about and what they told me. It's all so absurd!

I've been looking for another job, usually somewhat passively. It seems the recession is just now really taking a toll on the economy here in Oklahoma. Tulsa can't afford to pay all their police officers and firemen, business are closing left and right, and interesting opportunities are few and far between.

So I always come back around to feeling lucky to have my job.

I keep thinking I should get a second job to bring in some extra money, so maybe I can eventually afford to change jobs and move to Oklahoma City. At least then I'd be able to see Ryan more often.

But I don't want to do anything that involves standing up all the time...I have plantar fasciitus and my feet hurt too much. And no call centers...I don't have the patience to deal with stupid people. And not too many weekend shifts, or I'd never get to see Ryan.

This is where I lose my ambition and start looking for other ideas.

Volunteering...I really miss volunteering. In fact, it's utterly ridiculous that I've been back in Tulsa nearly two years and have never found myself a new cat-wrangling gig.

So I've filled out a volunteer application for the Tulsa SPCA, and I'm going to take it in to one of the next volunteer orientation meetings. Now we're talking!

I interviewed for a job there last Spring, but I opted for the veterinary job in Oklahoma City instead...and we know how that turned out. I probably couldn't have survived on the pay at the SPCA anyway, and there were no health benefits. But I think I can afford to volunteer there.

In fact, maybe I can't afford not to.

Complacent and Not Hating It

What a bad blogger I am! I guess you could say my recent hiatus has been due to nothing but more (and more) of the same--more hating the same job, more loving the same terrific guy, more wallowing in cat fur, and lots of "Lost" marathons in preparation for the final season.

I told myself I'd start job hunting for real after Christmas, which marked my six-month anniversary at the law firm. But it appears I'm getting a little complacent. Health benefits are nice, and I got a Christmas bonus for the first time in ten years.

My boss changed things around on us again a few months ago, and now I'm doing very little of the work I was hired for. She assured me this would be a great opportunity for me, and we had an excited conversation about some of my skills we could put to use--recruiting attorneys, writing coherent polices and procedures, organizing and such. She even gave us free reign for a few days to work out some of the details on our own.

Of course, she eventually accused us of changing policies without her permission and conveniently forgot some of the changes she'd agreed to. And the recruiting project went to just about everyone but me (not that I really regret that). I do a lot of filing these days, which apparently makes me seem like less of a threat to her. She leaves me alone most of the time, and she seems to have stumbled onto a division of work that fits everyone's skills quite well. Our numbers are in the excellent range, she gets the credit, and everyone seems a little less miserable.

Don't get me wrong...she's still bat shit crazy and I hate her with all I have in me.

But today she approved a week off in Spring to attend Eric-and-Sara's wedding in PA, and I'm feeling exceptionally positive at the moment.

Ryan and I are super excited to start planning our trip. We've both been terribly homesick for that part of the country, and we're thinking about making a road trip of it. A quick road trip, mind you, and a lot of ground to cover...but it'll be lots of fun.

I feel like my writing skills are fading fast. My job and the correspondence involved certainly don't seem to require mastery of the English language; even the attorneys are a testament to that. But lately I've been thinking more and more about dusting off my creativity and putting it to work, and I have a few projects in mind...so maybe this post will mark my official return to the world of blogging.