Random Thoughts and Recent Events

Thank you, everyone for your get well wishes for Ben. He seems to be feeling a little better: he is playing more with Bogey and has a little more energy than he has had recently. This may mean the medicine is working, or it may mean that I am engaging in wishful thinking- we will find out in about a week when he finishes the medicine and we take him in for a blood test. I will let you all know the outcome.

Not a whole lot going on here- we are slowly but surely getting our new house in order. R and I are in love with the new place: a lot more room and all one level (save for the basement). The bizarre snowstorm we suffered through together was a real downer (32 inches of snow!), but we are grateful that we were able to get the fence up for the backyard before the snow fell- otherwise I would be spending the majority of my day going in and out with the dogs on leashes! Our backyard is enormous and is filled with chipmunks, a fact that Ben and Bogey enjoy immensely. Let's hope that the chippies are faster than the boys, or else we will be having a lot of chippie funerals this summer!

I have decided not to get into great detail over one of my reader's choice options: difficult people suck. There is a slim chance that someone might read this who also knows this person and I do not wish to infuse anymore drama into an already ridiculously dramatic situation. I will leave it at this: There is a local community organization that I am very involved with both as a community member and as a member of our church. My involvement has meant that I have had to work with an individual who has the best of intentions (I think) but has great difficulty working with the group in a "team" way. For some reason this person has a personal "thing" against me and that has caused a lot of grief for both of us and for the group. I honestly can say that I have tried everything I can think of to get along with this person, but there seems to be some wierd competition thing going on with this person where I am slated as the "one to compete against." I have some idea as to the reason for this competitive slant but am frankly befuddled as to why I would be a threat. There has been a lot of "trash talk" going on with other people in this group and elsewhere in groups we both are involved in where this person has repeatedly put me down, blamed me for problems in the group, and essentially "thrown me under the bus". Of course, the people who are the listening party in these trash talk sessions have all come to me and told me everything, so I am painfully aware about what is being said about me by this person. I have so far kept my mouth shut about it under the assumption that the people who matter know the truth of the situation and know me well enough to draw their own conclusions about what is true. Still, it is painful to have to deal with someone who is nice as pie to my face and tearing me apart behind my back. Unfortunately, I have contact with this individual in another major arena of my life, so the strain of this less than healthy "relationship" is a bit much to bear most days. (hmmm, even though I have tried to be careful in this post, I have given a lot of information out. oh well, consider it a passive aggresive retalitary poke-I am only human and I have really had enough of trying to be the better person in this situation)

Recent events have decreased the intensity of the situation, so I did not end up quitting the community group, something that I ranted and raved and cried about for many weeks- a marathon long temper tantrum in which I told anyone who would listen that this was not worth the aggravation (even though the fact that I was temper tantruming about the situation so much indicates that it is, indeed, worth a great deal to me personally). And so the work continues, and hopefully some of the new projects we have come up with as a group will take off and we will be able to keep open the Family Center we worked so hard to get up and running. One of our current projects is making U.P quilts for U.P Troops- quilts that will be delivered to U.P soldiers who are wounded in Iraq and are recovering at Walter Reed. We have gotten the local boy scout troop and the local elementary school on board and the kids will be making quilt squares to put into the quilts- in fact today I am scrambling around trying to scrape enough money together to buy the needed quilt pens and quilt paint necessary for over 140 kids to use to design their quilt squares! The response to the project was much greater than we expected, so now we have the problem of getting enough materials- a good problem to have!

In other news, my birthday is tomorrow and I am a bit bummed out as I had hoped that by THIS birthday I would be a mother. No such luck. We have only been on the waiting list for a referral for a little under 3 months, and with a projected wait of 12-15 months we are no where near the point where we can even expect the phone call to start a dossier. I am keeping my spirits up by repeating over and over to myself : next year, next year for sure I will be a mom on my birthday! I haven't quite gotten to the point where I believe my own propoganda, but I will keep trying........

I will post a little later about another one of the reader's choice options: Bogey's Bad Day, as we could use a little comic relief on this blog, what with the "downer" I have been on lately.

Must run, as a chippie has ventured out from under the back deck and is "sunning" himself (herself? how can one tell?) on a snow pile. The boys are going bonkers, and it is hard to type with two dogs barking and pawing at me to get me to let them outside to "defend their territory" from a "very dangerous" chipmunk.