LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

My C-P id, ready to turn in.

Later, I prop my iPHone on the edge of the sink as I wash my hands. My elbow bumps the phone into the sink. It falls into the sink and the display promptly winks out. Ugh.

Friday I dealt with the sadness of my last day. Except it really wasn’t all that sad. I had an amazing cake with Mickey Mouse on it, and I got a Toy Story going away card and a $100 Visa gift card. I managed to muddle through my goodbye speech without completely losing my marbles. And I left at 11am, with everyone waving and cheering as I walked out the door for the last time. Again, I thought I’d lose it when I heard the door click behind me, but…it was time. I loved my years at the C-P but the job (d)evolved into something that I’d never apply for if I saw it in the paper. I will miss my coworkers, though.

The $100 gift card went with me from the C-P to the Apple Store at the Cherry Hill Mall, where I bought the iPhone 4S in white. I stop at the post office. I come home. I faceplant into the sofa. Later that night I wake up and have a cough and a 102 degree fever.

This morning, I wake up at 7am (!!) with a cough, a heavy wheeze and a 101.5 degree fever. I make a doctor appointment for 9:10 and hey, it snowed! So WM decides to drive me there, since I’m practically speaking in tongues because of the fever. I don’t do fevers well.

Diagnosis: Bronchitis, which could have turned into walking pneumonia if I didn’t nip it in the bud early (which I really had to because OMG I START A NEW JOB ON MONDAY AND I NEED TO NOT BABBLE!) The doc gave me a nebulizer treatment while I was there. Never had one before, and I’d like not to have one again.

Now I’m on an inhaler, cough medicine, a Z-pac, and an anti-inflammation steroid. My fever is slowly breaking (down to 99.5) and I feel human again for the first time in over 24 hours.

But at least struggling to breathe kept me from worrying about sucking at the new job. Yay perspective!

I don’t need to be at 100% health on Monday — but I need to be well enough to fake it. (I would like to feel better enough to go to Target tomorrow, though. Because I’d like a new notebook and some new pens to bring to the NEW JOB AND I REALLY HOPE I DON’T SUCK AT IT AND THE PEOPLE LIKE ME!)

I grew up doing puzzles every summer. We’d keep a puzzle on the kitchen table and add to it as we passed back and forth. Then, my family being who we are, we’d keep a tally how many pieces each of us properly completed. And when the puzzle was finished, the winner would gloat. Then we’d go and get another puzzle.

Unfortunately, having a bento box sized apartment, we don’t have a lot of space for puzzles. But oh how I yearned to feel that familiar soft thuddy click of a puzzle piece sliding into place. So last weekend we bought a cheap card table and one folding chair at Target.

And a puzzle. Yes, shut up, a Disney puzzle. But what I really like about this one is that the characters are roughly placed in the geographic locations where their stories took place. So Mowgli is in India and Tiana’s in the US Southeast and the rest of the Princesses are taking part in #occupyEurope.

Naturally, the puzzle we chose is too darn long for the card table, so we’re doing it in halves. When we’re done we’re going to glue it together and forget about it in a closet put it on the wall somewhere.

And then we’ll go and get ANOTHER puzzle!

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And hey, tomorrow around 9:15am EST, could you send me some positive “knock-em-dead, champ” vibes? Maybe hum the awesome beginning measures of “Welcome to the Jungle.” Dun-nuh-nuh-nuh! Dun-nuh-nuh-nuh! Dun-nuh-nuh-Dun-nuh-nuh-Duh-nuhnuhnuhnuhnuhnuhn. Thanks, all!

As we wrestled the Christmas decorations into place I came to the sad realization that I HATE decorating for Christmas. There. I said it. I love the final product, and I won’t STOP decorating, but GRAR it’s a pain!

In any case, it looks lovely…

These are ornaments, but they make a nice tableau on their own.

Our stockings.

I never thought I'd have a 'theme tree.' But it just happened that way.