Screaming Banshee, from Hallmark

I had a great Memorial Day weekend. I took Friday off and Mom & I went to Ocean City. I was off Monday anyway, but upon return to work Tuesday, I was immediately behind the 8-ball with stuff to do.

The weirdness started out on Wednesday night when a friend of the family passed out at her job. She was put on life support, but was brain dead. At only 50 years old. It’s sobering and sad and I feel heavy pangs of sadness for her survivors.

Then on Thursday, I got a phone call that Mom was in an ambulance heading to a hospital.

Wha?

She stumbled during a field trip and broke her ankle. She’s in a partial cast and using crutches. Her orthopedic follow-up is Tuesday afternoon. I’m pleased, because the doctor we’ll be seeing is associated with the Rothman Institute, known around here for skillfully reassembling South Jerseyans. But no matter what the doctor says, she’ll be off her foot for a bit. John and I and Kristen and WM and Mom’s friends are all pitching in and helping out, but it’s still chaotic. Tomorrow, I’ll swing by there before work to feed Chip, let him out, and get her settled for the morning. My brain is on hyperdrive trying to come up with crutch-friendly ways for her to go through her daily life without having to depend too much on other people showing up.

Work is a hot mess because I’m super-HYPER behind from missing most of Thursday, on top of the Monday & Friday before. And I’ll be off Tuesday afternoon, too. Yikes! I pre-emptively worked 2 hours on something today so I’d be set for a meeting tomorrow morning. (And so I can count the 2 hrs toward leaving early Tuesday & any other time I might need to leave to take care of something for her.)

And I have something else cooking too. Just can’t blog about it. No, it’s not a baby.

Oh, and everyone at work seems to think we’ll be having layoffs again before the month is out. Whatever. At least it’s summer.

But none of this is BAD, just chaotic. I used to pirouette gracefully when everything around me was up in the air but as I move more toward the “get off my lawn” stage of life, unpredictability leaves me cranky and short-tempered.

Anyway, dear CookieCrumbs, if you have tips on how to make crutching around any easier for a lovely lady, leave them below.

Dream:
I meet Karina Smirnoff from Dancing with the Stars and admire the new short-short hairdo she’s sporting. I admire it so much that I get my hair chopped in the same style, and end up looking like Ellen DeGeneres. (Lovely funny woman, not the hair for me.)

This is very bad. Family and friends are literally YELLING at me because of my stupid hair. I meet Karina in the street again, and notice her hair is long and curly.

“Hey…what happened to that haircut?” I asked. “It looked so good on you that I had THIS done.”

Karina looks at me in disgust and replies, “It was a wig.”

Fail.

And that’s all. Just wanted to let you know I tamed the crazy. At least for now.

My diet’s gone MIA for the entire last week. I’m not weighing myself until NEXT Monday. Speaking of Mondays – there’s a new 4-week ‘beginners’ yoga class at the place I went to 2 years ago that starts tomorrow at 5:30. I want to go but I’d have to head to work a half hour early to get out by five (my schedule’s usually 9:00 – 5:30). I also have a half-dozen other excuses* but I need to add some movement to my life and maybe 60-90 minutes spent with just me once a week would be a good thing.

I’m completely behind in Facebook and email again. I haven’t visited Facebook in a few weeks I think, and I feel guilty for the messages I’m sure are on there that I haven’t seen. I mean, how the heck hard is it for me to log into a website once a day? Hang in there, friends…I’m coming back.

This weekend I tried to sew a skirt, after not having touched patterns in ages. So I went to Joann fabric in Haddon Heights and picked this pattern (it says EASY!!!) :

And some light corduroy fabric – black with white polka dots…like this napkin. I cut out the pattern (I’m using skirt “C” without the button embellishment) and started pinning it to the fabric. Found out I didn’t have enough straight pins – went to Target today for more. Pinned the pattern, cut out the fabric, neglected to cut the little notches and crap that I was supposed to cut, and cursed myself for picking such a busy fabric. Now it’s all pinned together and sitting on top of the sewing machine waiting patiently for me to finish it. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow night. After the yoga class I most likely won’t attend.

It’s August. My summer’s speeding away from me and I can’t stop it. My birthday’s coming up next month and the thought of “36″ knocks the wind out of me. I can’t believe I’m turning into one of “those” women who angsts about their age. I don’t want to be that person.

And oh my gosh work. Work is fantastic. I love my job and I love my team (I hate where I sit, but that’s a long story that’ll never get posted here because my boss reads this blog – hi, Boss! Suffice it to say that quiet designers/coders shouldn’t sit with noisy, cheerful & boisterous salespeople) but I worry tremendously that I’ll be laid off. Again, nothing I can DO about that, but the worries are still there. So as of tomorrow, I’m swearing off reading the unauthorized blog about my parent company which does nothing but scare me shitless about “what could happen on Friday!!”

I played a lot of World of Warcraft this weekend…got my shadow priest from level 46 to level 53. And with Akromah, I did some PvP with the guild and went on my first Gruul’s Lair raid. Ugh…I haven’t updated my WoW blog in a month! Will put that on the list for tomorrow. Another thing to think about. Should’ve screenshotted something from Gruul. :/

So tonight as I lie in bed I’ll pray for the calming of my worries, for health, for the willpower to get back on the healthy track (could I have regained all 17 lbs in one week of bad eating?), for the ability to continue to do my job well (please, Lord…PHP/MySQL implanted in my brain overnight would be faboo!) for prosperity and abundance, and for the wellbeing of the usual suspects whom I include in my nightly prayers.

And as I try not to feel like I’m being pulled underwater by a riptide of stressors, I’ll cling to what’s important.

* 1) It’s $10 a week, which turns out to be $40. Which isn’t much, but still, I worry; 2) I am so out of shape right now I’m afraid I’d be the worst one there – just like HS gym; 3) By the end of the workday I just want to come straight home; 4) What if nobody talks to me?; 5) What if somebody talks to me?; 6) Would once-a-week yoga really do me any good?
Return to my whining about yoga