The Mojo is back

Finally it's coming back. 


First I did some baking ... fresh strawberries yielded 2 yummy desserts: 

Then my new creative space is definitely working out. Finished this week , a cute little clutch for the Craftaholics Anonymous Christmas in July Gift Exchange

and a messenger book bag as a year end present for my daughter's teacher

I also made a weighted lap pad (shaped like a fish) for the kid, similar to the one she has at school and that does wonders against the constant fidgeting. I have to say it really works wonders. This evening, she watched a movie without pulling out every single toy out, running around with her blanket or hopping and skipping and dancing in front of the TV. The school's OT and educational team told me it was a great tool but now that I've seen it with my own eyes I'm sold. Definitely making another one of those soon. 

In other news, my friend Shari and her hubby just bought their first home. Since they are DIY virgins, I helped a bit when and where I could and I have to say all of this has been very therapeutic. I think I am finally ready to face the office stress. Speaking of which , this is my on-call week... not much sleep last night, maybe 2 hours between calls. Soooo tired! But I get to hide home for the rest of the week for my troubles. 

Look what UPS delivered

Look what UPS just delivered today ! It's finally there, my birthday present. Only about a month late but well worth the wait. I will now be able to take pictures of the family events in style... from compact digital to DSLR, meet my new toy: 

I patiently waited for the battery to charge and was able to test it after dinner. Pretty impressive compared to my aging Fiji FinePix. Love the flip display and how fast it is. I'm looking forward to discovering all the cool things I can do with it. Just a bit put off by the size of the user's manual but I'm afraid I'll have to suffer through it to make the best out of this great camera. 

In the other news, weeks after having the stairwell repainted, our "wall of fame" is back together.

And even though the creative side of me is still not up to much of anything I have started getting my new space organized. Finally out of the plastic bis they were stored, my stash... well that's only a small part, the fat quarters. I have yet more bins to unpack. Maybe all this will wake up the inspiration. I'm going to need it since I signed up for a gift exchange. 

Fail!

Still pretty shaken. First day back in the office after working from home for a week : Fail

Life goes on

It somehow feels wrong that the pain of losing someone so dear can go dull. But you can't really listen to the pain too much. There is life going on around you. Life, the life I chose, with a man I love, the life I made, my beautiful and and sweet little girl. And so much more. Family, friends, work, house, all those things pull you back from the hurt. And slowly you can taste again, smile again, think again. Less tears, less pain, more life. 

So life, I am back... 

Life is my princess picking strawberries at the local farm with Mom and Dad

and devouring them 

AND then the basement refurb finally complete... All that space for painting, drawing, cutting, sewing. 

Hopefully the creative side of me will wake back up soon.

Curtain

I spent the past few days curled up and sad, locked up in my house. Today was my grand mother's funeral, in Marseille. Today was a day of pain for me, stuck in the US and not able to attend. Thank you Joan for organizing this small memorial service at my house. It was good to be able to say goodbye even from so far away.

My sweet Mamie, so wrinkled and so beautiful, you went to rest with Grandpa.

I remember of the Tuesday evenings and the Wednesdays spent at your home, of the mini pots and pans and gastronomic dishes my sisters and I cooked in them. I remember the jumpers we knitted with you and often forgot to finish. I remember the sewing, the painting and the play dough sculpting. I remember the brioche sprinkled with grated chocolate for the afternoon snacks.

I remember the gentleness, the care and generosity. I remember all the happy moments, my sweet old grand mother that never was angry.  All your life you took care and worried about the others, Thank you for helping me be who I am now. Time for a well deserved long rest. I cannot describe how much I will miss you. Or how much the whole family will miss you.

Terrible day

This morning I learned my grandmother has died last night during her sleep. This afternoon, my dad told me he did not want me to fly to France for the funeral. Sad and distressing. Enough said.

Statistics

I've been ranting quite a bit about work and about how it has been overwhelming busy lately. Today was no exception. Every day seems like we are getting sucked in deeper in the backlog hole with little hope for relief. I did put together a few statistics about our activity level last week. So here is what came out of the numbers: our department's workload has shot up more than 30% and this has been sustained since the first week of March. Glad to have proof I am not going crazy. Hopefully my boss can use all those pretty statistics to convince management we need some help. Hopefully he can because there is the distinct possibility of the team going bananas here. 

Believing in fate?

Just as I'm seriously questioning the direction of my professional life, something quite unexpected came up today. Intriguing coincidence. I just received an email that could change everything. But sssshhh!! I don;t want to jinx it. More in a future post.

Today, the hubby and I also met with our daughter's educators team. We went over her progress during the school year in the language development program and made decisions about the coming year. Long story short, she will stay in the program for the next school year and her teacher, language therapist and occupational therapist are all confident she will be ready to enter preschool by fall of 2011 and will have caught up with her peers by then. I have no doubt we made the best decision enrolling our daughter in the program. One year ago, we had a very frustrated little savage girl that was unable to communicated with us. Now we have a happy 4 year old princess that dances in her classroom (we learned that today to our great surprise) with still some communication challenges but on the road to overcome them. 

So some good things. And hopefully more to come...

Another hiatus, another rant.

No post for the past 2 weeks. No I did not drop off the face of the earth. It just happens that May is a busy month: Hubby's birthday (party), my birthday (party again) , mother's day (busy day), other family gatherings. It also turned out to be moving time for Annie (one of the hubby's first cousin). Love getting boxes out of storage, into truck, out of truck, up 2 flights of stairs... Oh and yes as the weather turns nicer, add some gardening to the mix: planting, weeding, digging, raking... ouch my back hurts!!

And then there is work. Frustrating, overwhelming, crazy rhythms, too much, all super urgent, super red hot. And still short staffed. Not to mention the undermining of morale due to the company's policies. An article from Business Week illustrates quite accurately what is happening at my place of work day in and day out. It is clear it is time to move on, not because of the job, which I do love, nor because of the workload (there are always going to be busier times in any job) but mostly because of the general atmosphere. That is what truly make the job exhausting. Every day, the looming treat of finding yourself out of a job on a whim. Think I'm joking? 

The daily race/paranoia starts at 6:30AM. Alarm blares. Tired. Not enough sleep. So tired from yesterday. And sore from uneasy sleep. Get up, get cleaned up, get dressed. Wake up the kid, get her cleaned up and dressed. 7:15AM Breakfast Quickly now. 7:30AM time to leave the house, need to get to work by 8AM. Rectification: need to be at my desk ready to work BEFORE 8AM. No breaks between 8AM and 10AM, god forbid you would want a second cup of coffee. Work. Work. Work. Cram an emergency case here, a not so urgent but high profile case there. Work some more. NOON. At noon everything stops. Because if you do not take your lunch break between noon and 1PM, you are NOT getting a break. Rush back. You can't be back at your desk later than 1PM. Heartburn almost guaranteed. If you are on the phone with a customer at noon, what do you do? Well it's a dilemma: You can do the right thing and scratch your lunch break or try to shake off the customer. Ethics vs. stomach: more heartburn. 1PM: Work. Work. Geez it's 4PM. Quick finish up with the emergencies of the day. Cases are pouring in. It's always at the last minute of their last day on site that an installer decides to create a new case. Work faster. 5PM. If you leave on time you are not dedicated enough, look at the work pile that as not shrunk one bit since this morning thank to the new tickets, work some more. Oh wait, daycare close at 5:30PM. Rush back. Apologize yet again for being late picking up your kid. Heartburn. Arrival at home 5:45PM. Already out of juice. Still got to take care of a little one: cuddles, dramas, games. Dinner. 7PM. Is it over yet? No. 7:30PM, PJ time. 8PM bedtime. Sometimes bedtime drama too. Time to clean up the kitchen, tidy up a bit. Can I sit down please? 9PM : time to catch up with emails, craft/household projects, a bit of time with the hubby if we are lucky. 10PM I grant myself a bit of time to play/blog/read.11PM yawwwwwn I'm beyond exhausted. Time to turn in. Can't sleep. Too much thinking about work Tossing and turning. Heartburn. Finally get some shuteye after midnight. Rinse and repeat. 

Time for a change of pace. Really. 

I love my cats, I love my cats, I love my cats

I keep saying this to myself because the level of aggravation has been so high the past 4 months I might just forget. After some improvement and a plateau in Sonja's allergies, another setback We had been testing various foods hoping to find the one that would work out for her (and hopefully work out for Huey too). This past week. she was again itching so bad she scratched her neck part of her face raw. In the meantime, one of the benefits of the foods we tried out was that there has been a lot less hairball/regurgitation (yes I know "ewwwww"). Anyway, another trip to the vet's. Another $250 spent in exams and tests. Final word: Impossible to tell what she is allergic to. There may be more than one thing too. Conclusion: We are now using prescription cat food. To give perspective on this, a 15lbs bag of Purina cat chow goes for about $15, a 10lbs bag of prescription food is about $60.

I love my cats, I love my cats, I love my cats.Murpff.