I'm in one of those moods/phases where I'm a bit angry and sad.  The reason?  My kid and work.  It really stinks to be frustrated with work all by itself, but when I have to drop my kid off and be away from her all day to instead immerse myself in frustrations it pushes some buttons.

I'll freely admit jealousy of the women who get to stay with their kids.  Not that I understand how it could happen for people in lines of work where a few years away equates to never being able to find work again - plus, you know, bills and whatnot.

My mind turns to the math.  She's awake for 77 hours a week I get at most 37 of those with her.  It really stinks.  I know she's also getting an education and that even if i were with her now all day every day the time would come when school started and we'd be in a similar position.  It's all just going so fast.

Because my brain likes to torture me, I even start fretting about the start of the week early in the day on Sunday, causing me to feel like I'm losing even more time.  By 10am on Mondays my stomach is twisted.

I'm holding onto the "this too shall pass" stance.  I know we all go through these phases with work, but this one has been bad and longer than many.  It's time to pass.

What a busy day.  I walked out of the house shortly after 7am for our normal Saturday routine (Starbucks and Little Gym).  We were back at 10:20 or so for a quick feeding and back out the door at 11am to get to a first birthday party.  I can't believe I'm attending first birthday parties.  This is for a little gal to a couple that are friends with My Favorite Egg.

It was quite the nice Alice in Wonderland themed affair.  Since it was in Irwin I had asked about visiting with Avery's grandparents.  Nonno was available, so we went and hung out.  We picked some flowers, we fed the chickens, and we headed to... McDonald's at Nonno's suggestion to check out the play area.

I was a bit leery, I mean the play area is meant for older kids - even at Chick-fil-a and we're talking McDonald's, the Walmart of  fast food play areas.  We were in there for maybe 15 minutes and Avery was crying three times.  The first time after she quickly and easily climbed up the stairs on her own and was headed towards the slide.  I climbed up (thank goodness they make them sturdy enough to hold someone my size) to find a little girl hugging her that told me her brother was "in a hurry and accidentally stepped on her hair".  Oy.  I got her down the slide and followed behind her to find her at the bottom crying, but this time I know why - man the static electricity!  zap zap zap.  Back on the ground they had this huge Big Mac in that room w/ a carpeted track around it.  She started running circles and a little boy started behind her.  After two laps I should have trusted my instinct that this kid was going to push her because at the end of lap three he sure did.  Not enough to knock her over or anything, but enough to make her cry.

We got back home a few minutes late for bed time with a zonked kiddo in the back.  I admit, I enjoy her in that state as it means she'll be willing to cuddle.  It was a really nice last 20 minutes of the day.

We're back! Once again we headed off on a cruise ship for a week.  This time we drove to Bayonne to leave on Anthem of the Seas for a week visiting Bermuda and Boston.  Vacations are definitely different with a little one that naps for a couple of hours mid-day, so this one was a bit low key and I don't have a ton of activities to talk about (and there is lots of fun activities onboard this class of ship).

It was pleasant enough travels although a bit too cold to get as much use out of our balcony as I would have liked.  Then again, two decks below our balcony was a smoker area, so that made it less than desirable to sit out anyhow.

I fought a sore throat again all stinking week.  It is one that was negligible during the day but got pretty painful into the evening and overnight.  It made me cough and felt like I had hot sauce dripping down my throat which made me want to swallow all the more.  Even moving my tongue certain ways hurt like I had strained a muscle.

I will note that we took Avery to the pink sand beaches while in Bermuda and we headed to the aquarium in Boston.  We probably waited an hour and a half (easy) in line for the aquarium just to get in and good glory was it packed.  The walk from the bus terminal we rode to was quite pleasant, I could imagine walking about Boston a few weeks later in the year and it being quite lovely.  It was a bit cool and still not yet in bloom.  We had a good time.  It was nice to get away, for sure, I needed that.

We did come back to leaves popping out on the trees - and the grass going crazy, so I was busy mowing/weeding today since I had one more day off.  This is one clump of activities I'd rather do without in the summer.  I hate being stained green with dirt under my nails and feeling my sinuses rebel against the cut grass.

After the work around the house was done we headed out for a bite to eat and a few stops (Big Lots and Aldis - I'll pick up from Giant Eagle tomorrow since I had little here to make meals with after being away).

On our trip back towards my place on the highway we had a bit of a scare.  My Favorite Egg (MFE) said "oh, a deer, no that's a dog".  I can be heard in the video from his car saying "no no no no".  Fortunately the dog got out across both lanes (65mph highway) as both we and the lane beside us tried to screech to a halt.  Well the tractor trailer two cars back in the right lane didn't and hit the one car there, pushing him probably in part into the car beside us and into us.

MFE got us off of the road safely and in the grand scheme without any worries.  His car definitely has some damage, but we just had enough to shake us up a little (or at least me - Avery didn't even seem to notice and she just wanted to go home as it was her bedtime).  To  my understanding everyone was okay and we believe the dog made it safely across and up the hill on the other side. Thankful and blessed.

More stress and drama - calls and questions.  Now we wait.  This and some other issues have been heavy on my mind.  I also have a little girl that has had a cough since Friday, has been working to keep diaper rash at bay, and now she had a couple rather loose diapers today.  I need more sleep than what I've been getting, I assure you of that.

Somedays you learn something about people that you know that shocks you. Sometimes those things make you think about a range of things.

As I've always said - that one person you just don't like (even if you can't put your finger on why) there is someone who loves them.  It's always very apparent when you've got a mutual friend and you find yourself scratching your head wondering why or how on earth your mutual friend finds cause for their relationship with said person.

The scary/bad/evil person is some dark skulking figure without a face, not someone you know.  That's why they say often it is someone close to a victim, the last person you'd suspect, who was the villian.

We often forget that it could easily be us that is the villian in someone else's story.  It could easily be any one of us.
1 Peter 5:8 Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

You're kidding right?

I got mail today from collections for local taxes saying I didn't pay my Cburg taxes in 2016.  Um.  Right, I didn't pay you any local taxes.  I didn't LIVE HERE in 2016.

I guess if you're too lazy to look up on your local records that I purchased the house in February 2017 and too lazy to look at my 2017 taxes which indicated partial year of February to December of 2017 here you probably don't want to go ahead and fight Richland to try and get the money that was paid, rightly, to them, so how about you leave me out of it?

I can't believe I have to waste my time making a telephone call and trying to figure out what I have to do to enlighten them.  Their form says I have to submit proof.  How about you submit proof I lived here?  This is your burden, not mine.

The humidifiers are off.  The heat is off.  The windows and back door are open.  Avery was outside at the end of the day at daycare without her coat.  We went for a walk.  The sun was out.  I spent an hour in the sun cleaning up dog poop in the back yard.

Ok, so it isn't all great, but even that task felt pretty good today.  I am sure winter will get another hurrah, but I see hope today.  It has me in such a good mood that even my long work day yesterday which resulted in me only getting to see Avery for about 30 minutes seemed like a good day.

Work is still being a bear, but I'm trying to make progress where I can.  I won't say I'm not stressing, I am, but I slept!  I actually needed my alarm to wake me this morning.  This is no small thing to me as of late.

The follow up call from the doctor's office said the lab work said I didn't have a UTI and that I could 'stop the antibiotics'.  I don't know what to believe about the two sides of the argument as to what causes antibiotic resistance.  That aside, I felt like something was up with me, so I finished them anyhow.

 I also went back to the dentist for the other filling late last week, so that's done with.  This time it was only two shots of Novocaine and nothing in excessively painful locations.

This week turns my focus away from things about my body maintenance and towards house maintenance.  Starting first, on Tuesday I have the place that will make the bath cabinet for my 1/2 bath coming to measure.  I've decided to do a floating one since this will eliminate a few of my concerns, it is in style as of late, and it will still give me some storage space in there.  It will be good to get the ball rolling in there.  They also gave me pricing for the other bathrooms, which I'd like to do, but only after I have figured out what type of tile I'd like to put down up there and in the laundry room.

I did have someone come clean twice. I'm not sure how I've been feeling about it.  There were things missed in the first clean, and the second clean took even less time and still seemed to have some gaps that tweaked my nerves a bit.  There was to be a third clean, but rescheduling occurred and then some dialog that made me feel even less like this was the situation for me, and that third clean never happened, nor have I heard back.  I've reached out to someone else and they're coming to give me an estimate on Wednesday.

I saw my first robins of the year this morning!  That's a little less than 2 weeks earlier than last year.

I've been quite the slacker so far this year posting to my blog.  Forgive me.

So the eye doctor appointment I mentioned in my last post went well.  No changes whatsoever to the mole on my eye.  I've since gotten one filling, but we ran out of time and couldn't do the second in that appointment, so I have to go back in March *sigh*.  It took three shots of Novocaine, the third into the roof of my mouth because I was still feeling him drilling!

At the beginning of each year I make my rounds to all of the doctors, so I guess it makes sense that I start to sound like an old person with everything falling apart, but I also have to report that I'm on antibiotics today too.   I had my gyn appointment yesterday where I asked for them to test my urine for a UTI.  When I was pregnant I had my first/only one and it was completely asymptomatic then, so some oddness I've been noticing lately combined with my existing appointment had me wanting to know.

I've had a headache that I've been beating away for weeks now too, which has given me a stiff neck, a feeling that my head is too heavy to hold up, and tired achy eyes.  Of course I'm now making myself paranoid as I look around on Google.  I guess we'll see when the lab tests come back, but either way I've started the antibiotics.

I feel like a little kid again... after a loooong time, I have cavities that need filled.  Not one, but two.  *ugh*  I haven't had to have anything like that done since I was in NC, so like more than 15 years ago, and even then I think it was only replacing older fillings.  I've been drinking the local water which is fluoridated, so why do I still have cavities HMM?  Yeah, poison, I know, but I got sick of lugging bottles of water.  I still do it for Avery, but I'm drinking their poison.

Tomorrow I return to the eye doctor for a follow up to my appointment 6 months ago where they saw a mole/freckle on the back of my eye that they want to make sure isn't growing or changing.  I was so busy dreading that appointment and I didn't give the dentist visit the proper amount of worry.

Polar vortex.  This means my car says it's -4 out and I can really tell how poorly insulated things are here.  The hinge on the front door had ice forming on it... on the inside of the house.  I've always felt a cascade of cold air falling from the window over the kitchen sink, but dang it's cold right now.

I'm once again super grateful for my garage. Of course, without it being allowed to have a heat vent it is down in the 30s in there too.  But that's definitely better to expose myself and Avery to as we come and go.

The comments I made in my last post - well things have begun to escalate on their own.  The next week or so should be interesting to see how things pan out.  This again leaves me somewhat sad for the whole situation.

I'm over here pouting that another weekend has ended so quickly.  Friday was a bit rough, it involved carefully mulling over and then choosing my words in an email.  When one of the folks above me said "do you have a minute to talk" I thought I was in trouble.  Instead I was told how well worded that reply was and how grateful they were.  whew.  The stress is still there at work as we close out that one effort.  I just want it totally done, but I know that some of the conflict will likely go on beyond this effort.  I'm trying to do my best to not escalate things.

The winter storm that came through didn't end up producing much around here.  It gave me plenty of time to do our shopping yesterday and get home before the rain really set in.  It rained pretty hard up through the middle of the night, so I was pretty concerned when I woke up and decided after a few peeks out the window that we were not heading to Starbucks and off to church.  Eventually they cancelled church.  (How crazy is that.  You're not a Catholic anymore when that happens, that's for sure.)  A while later the plows were in the neighborhood, so we decided to venture to Starbucks after all.

After coming home Beff and J visited with us since they were up in the burgh for an event, so we had a nice visit for the afternoon.  This did put off Avery's nap, but she went down easily after they left.

It was a nice weekend, to hell w/ the weather, but it sure was too short.