It's been a stressful week.

Not only has work continued to be a nightmare, but we found out midweek that a friend of ours had died. We thought that it was on Wednesday, but it turned out that it was last week, after she had come home from taking her dogs to an agility event. She apparently got the dogs into the house and in their crates with water, and then collapsed. Other friends who could not reach her finally called the police, who called her husband—they were not living together—for permission to break in. The dogs were hungry but okay, but it was too late to save her. It looks like it happened very quickly. She did have some health problems, so that was probably a contributing factor. It was quite a shock.

Saturday we were up at eight and off to the Farmer's Market. We had only our small hats in the car, but were glad of them when it started to rain just as we were completing our run. We got more tomatoes, chicken salad, a loaf of bread for Hair Day, and some pound cake for a dessert, and then had to hare out of there as the rain was coming down harder. We had the usual nice ride through Polk Street and then through the countryside of Villa Rica Road before reaching the Butlers' house.

It was a small crowd. We talked some about Amy, and her husband Charles showed up with a picture of her with one of her basenji dogs, Rory, winning an award. He said that was the way she would want to be remembered. She spent many weekends running her dogs in Rally and Agility events along with her other friends in the dog show circuit, and loved doing it. There will be a memorial service for her later in the month.

James had spent last night cooking up his "light chicken cacciatore," which is done with diced tomatoes rather than tomato sauce, and that was our main course. Ron and Lin made both rice and pasta for sides, there was garlic bread, and others had brought fruit and veggie trays. All was delicious.

Lately Hair Day always seems to coincide with James' IPMS meeting date, so we had to cut out about 1:20 so he could get home, pick up his egg plane, and get off to the meeting. I was spoiling for another bad headache from all the rain we have been having—Friday night when I got home I had taken four ibuprofin and crawled onto the futon to ease the throbbing—but logged on to work for about fifteen minutes to make sure no "fires" had broken out from the time I'd left at 3:30 to later in the afternoon. To my relief I'd received a quote I needed, and a form I needed. I am so torn between what I have to do first: do I start on the order that renews the order that's expiring July 29 (necessary for CDC's vaccine transactions)? or search for the temp scientist they needed to start tomorrow but we didn't get the order on time? or print out the orders that I was assigned two weeks ago and still haven't had a chance to look at? or print out all the quotes I've received on the orders I'm already working on?...arrrrrgh!!!! I need four hands and Hermione's time turner!

When James got back from his meeting, we went to the Hallmark store at the mall to attend the ornament premiere, which I discuss a little further in  Holiday Harbour. I was pretty dispirited by then. Did find something cute: a "Dreamy Sheep" on sale, to add to the sheep collection. Also bought two cinnamon croissants from Cinnabon (no icky icing on them, and they were not overly sweet, thankfully) for dessert. Came home and just had a sandwich for supper since lunch was so bountiful.

Had a happy chat: Rodney showed up for the first time in ages and we had a nice chat about DVDs, mortgage payoffs and saving for retirement, and such. Jen, Emma and Mike showed up later, so we were up until one.

Slept this morning until Willow started to bark to go out; it was a good sleep-in, I suppose, but I'm so stressed out I can't sleep well; I wake in the middle of the night and Friday night at one point I could not stay on my right side because it was uncomfortable from the humidity. We had a quick breakfast, then went to Kroger for James to get gasoline and to buy the few things we needed: those damn bananas, some breakfast burritos for James, and the usual other stuff. We were flabbergasted when the grocery bagger put all our cold stuff, including two bargain slices of beef and some turkey thighs for Thursday dinner, the burritos, the grapes, etc. in a regular shopping bag and packed the All laundry detergent that was on a super sale (and we had coupons) and the Sunday paper in our insulated bag! Do we have to get a white marker and write "COLD" on it? This isn't the first time it's happened!

But we saw something neat on the way home: there were two adult Canada geese, one at one end, one at the other, leading a little queue down a side street. Between them were two nearly grown goslings, fully fledged, just smaller than their parents! It was so cute!

We put all the perishables away and then took my car and went out to Bed, Bath & Beyond with an expiring coupon. James got a stand for his tablet with it, and we found one of those dryer lizard things—it's an attachment that goes on your vacuum cleaner hose so you can vacuum out the dryer vent and filter. On the return trip we bought gasoline at Costco, then stopped at Aldi for milk (it's only $2 there) and a couple of other things, then came home. We read the paper, then James went downstairs to work on another egg plane, and I reordered a prescription, reviewed four Amazon Vine offerings, and finally took the rest of the Independence Day decorations down. I didn't take any lunches this week while I teleworked, although I had stripped the porch decorations down really quickly one night after work before the flag faded, so I never had time to put them away. So all the "summer fall stuff" is back up, and everything else back in the closet; the foyer swept and the summer display back on the little blue table.

And I got the paper read and the coupons cut before it was time for supper, which was some lamb shanks James had marinated in Lawry's Hawaiian marinade, along with my favorite Rice'a'Roni, the fried rice with the crunchy veggies in it. We ate dinner with Willow casting pitiful eyes up at us and watched a four episode marathon of The Big Bang Theory, which included the original "Soft Kitty" episode where Sheldon gets sick. A "milky green mucus" alert, eh? Talk about "too much information"!

I missed the first five minutes of it, but there was a lovely episode of Nature on tonight, "My Life as a Turkey." This was the story of a gentleman who incubated sixteen wild turkey eggs and then raised them, learned their turkey "language," and lived with them (even roosting with them). One was killed as a chick by a snake, and after that he only left them after dark, even going out to the woods and foraging with them. The four and five day old chicks already knew which bugs to eat and what animals to avoid! Finally most of the flock left him; one hen called "Sweet Pea" built a nest, but was killed sitting on the eggs, and the last turkey with him, a male, finally grew old enough to see him as a rival and attacked him. He was able to swat it away and it ran off into the forest and didn't return. Very sad, but...all part of the circle of life, I suppose. Made me cry.

And now it's bedtime and I'm already thinking about tomorrow and back to...what do I do, what do I do? I wish running away from home was an option!

Labels: birds, Christmas, decorating, dogs, food, friends, health, shopping, television, work

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