My mother-in-law, God bless her heart, sent Eric and me an Olive Garden gift card for our 10th wedding anniversary last week.  That means nothing less than the fact that as I write this, I am happily chawing on leftover chicken Alfredo and breadsticks, which means that life is good, God is in Heaven and all is right with the world. 

If she also sends us that for Christmas, I shan't be at all disappointed.

My very favorite brunch (I eat between 10-11am and then usually don't eat again until dinner) is leftovers from the night before.  Even if I made dinner, which I usually do, it has been more than 12 hours since I made that dinner, so it's sort of like someone else cooked for me, which makes me feel very loved, spoiled and cared for since no one ever, ever does that.  Ever.  I trace this all back to my mother not breastfeeding me (using that tired old 1960's "My milk dried up!" excuse), thereby sentencing me to that crappy homemade formula that used Carnation instant milk and Karo, THEREBY sentencing me to a life of weight problems).  Since I didn't get my Mommybonding, I have nurture issues.

My dogs had to be let out to pee at the awful hour of 2:30 Monday morning.  It was bad enough that their little lentil sized bladders were fit to burst and they were yipping like coyotes at a time of night when I have zero interest in getting up.  It was bad enough that NO ONE in my house can hear dogs barking their lungs out except me.  But then, they flew outside like their fur was on fire and their ass was a'catchin' and jammed their heads under the shed to bark their butts off at what they probably thought was a raccoon.  We have one that sneaks through the fence and tries to get at the garbage cans in which we keep the dog and cat food.  It wasn't a raccoon and all 3 dogs at once ended up getting their whole heads utterly skunked.

There was mad shrieking and yapping and barking.  Their eyes got all teary and a little swollen and the kept shaking their heads and snotting around.  I was still half-asleep and blindly exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, so I figured I'd deal with it the  next morning.  I mean, I was getting up just 3 hours later and surely it could wait until then.  I shoved the dogs back into the laundry room and went back to bed.  If I left them outside, I'd have to dig up the bark collars from where ever they'd been last left and I was just too tired to do that. 

That was a big mistake.

The smell instantly permeated the whole house.  In case you don't know, the smell of fresh skunk does not smell like skunk.  It smells more like the stuff they put into natural gas so you can tell you have a leak (in case you didn't know THAT, natural gas is odorless and they put the stink into it so you don't die if it starts to seep out).  Since we have an all electric house, it was clearly the skunk.  It was terrible and as I tried to sleep, I kept wanting to get up and shove out the dogs because it was so bad, but I was trapped in that half-asleep place.  Got up at 5:30 and shoved them out.  The house was bad all day.  I washed their bedding and that didn't help much.  Today is a good bit better.  I had a headache from it yesterday and I don't today, so it must be better.

For those of you who are interested, my friend, Sherry Mercurio swears this works:

http://home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home/sk00001.htm

Sadly, I have no peroxide, so my dogs remained skunked for the time being until I can get to town.  Delena insisted that yesterday, he lunch smelled like skunk when she opened it.

Work has been going well.  I'm building my speed and learning more words all of the time.  A lot of the art of transcription is getting into the cadence of a certain doctor's dictation.  The problem I have is that I type for about 20 different hospitals, so I don't really get a chance to lock onto a few doctors and perfect my work with them.  There are some that I know pretty well and that helps.  Also, each hospital has a different way they want things done.  Some want the allergies typed all in capital letters, some want the physical exam in double spaced bullet statements, some want single spaced bullet statements, some want paragraph form.  Some want the date spelled out, others want only numbers.  Basically, for each report, you have to check the hospital profile and find out what they want done. 

I'm up to an average of about 90 lines per hour, which is not where they want me to be.  I'm supposed to do a minimum of 2000 lines per week over 16 hours (more lines and more hours if possible) with a consistent rate of no less than 100 lines per hour.  I am working aggressively toward that goal with the degree of proficiency needed.  It's kind of addictive, really, and I miss it when I'm not doing it.  Today, tomorrow and Saturdays are my days off.  My schedule assures me that I will hit almost every holiday and yes, we work holidays.

I took the job with no idea why I was doing it.  We were fine financially and didn't need the money.  It would be nice, but not vital.  It came my way through a bizarre series of circumstances and so I thought it prudent to pursue it.  Now, I'm glad I did because Eric's last day for the mail route is the 30th.  He also had a project he was set to do for his electrical business pushed out past what he though it would be, so now, the money I make has become completely vital.  Just shows that you have to follow those hunches!!

For Thanksgiving, we are having friends over, plus I think David and Amber (my son and his girlfriend) are coming and I think Josh (my other son) might be coming up as well.

Life is good and blessed.

I hope yours is too.

Be really particular,