I hate sand flies

Last week, I attended my company's annual sales meeting on a lovely island on the Gulf side of Florida. There were palm trees, and thankfully no hurricanes. Despite the warning signs posted all over the place we were staying, I did not encounter any alligators. And they have lizards the way we have squirrels here in the upper Midwest, which was kind of a fun change. I like lizards.

But they have sand flies, also called no-see-ums, also called by me the Most Evil Insects on the Planet, and that's coming from someone who is allergic to mosquito bites and has often said that the question of their existence would be the most important question I could ask God.

I have now had dozens and dozens of sand fly bites for more than a week. They have not changed at all in this time. They look the same as they did when I got them. They are as itchy as they were when I got them. And I'm starting to worry about the effect of what I feel is probably an unreasonable amount of Benadryl accumulating in my system. Benadryl is the only thing that makes them bearable, so I have been taking two to three pills every single day for a week (I didn't have any Benadryl with me on the trip and no way to get any, or I would have started popping antihistamines even sooner).

So...if anybody has any ideas for what to do to make these horrible things go away - or any convenient excuses I can give the next time someone tells me I have to travel anywhere near a beach - please let me know. Itchy legs make me really cranky. And I have enough other stuff going on in my life to make me cranky (like the homework I am not doing while I write this post), so eliminating even one source of crankiness would be most welcome.

Dip it - dip it good

At work, I am becoming somewhat famous for my dip recipes. Once a month, we have "birthday day," when everyone in the department brings in food to celebrate whomever's birthday falls that month. (Luckily, every month has at least one birthday in it.) Then we just eat all day and compare recipes. It's excellent for morale. :)

Anyway, I'm becoming known for dips because usually about all I can muster the night before birthday day is stirring. I would love to bake or make something more complicated for my lovely coworkers, but this is life. So pretty much every month, I bring dip. Sometimes I really take the shortcut and just throw a mix in some sour cream and call it a day. But occasionally I put in a little extra effort.

That said, here are my three favorite birthday day dip recipes. The first one on the list is one I just tried for the first time today, and it was super good.

Garlic Onion Dip
Adapted from Simple & Delicious magazine (I think!)
2-8 oz. pkgs. cream cheese, softened
3 green onions, green parts only, chopped
2 strips cooked and crumbled turkey bacon
3 tbsp. apricot preserves
1 tsp. minced garlic
Dash of pepper

Really good on whole wheat crackers.

Spicy Avocado Dip
From kraftfoods.com; EVERYONE loves this one, and it makes a lot
2 medium avocados, mashed
16 0z. sour cream
1/4 cup chopped green onions (about 4-5 onions)
1 envelope ranch dressing mix
1 tbsp. lime juice (I just squeeze half a lime without trying very hard)
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper

This is good on everything - veggies, Wheat Thins, other crackers...but it's the best on blue corn chips.

Salsa Onion Cheese Dip
I think I made this one up.
16 oz. sour cream
1 envelope onion soup mix
About 1/2 cup salsa
About 1/4 cup shredded cheddar jack cheese

The best on Fritos Scoops...but works on other chips and veggies, too.

I would rather eat chips and dip than cake. I know that's weird, but I can back this up - because there's always cake on birthday day, and I hardly ever eat it because I'm full of chips and dip.

It's come to this

This is what I had for dinner:


Please allow me to explain how this came to be. This was my day today:

• Get up only 15 minutes late, which is a big improvement over the 30-40 minutes I usually waste trying to convince myself to get out of bed, especially now that it is totally dark at 5:30 in the morning again.
• Get ready for work.
• Go wake Hannah up, who says, "I just want to lay here and cover up and close my eyes." Totally agree with Hannah but make her get out of bed anyway.
• Manage to get Hannah ready, toast her breakfast and go wake Brock up.
• Finish getting dressed for work while Brock brushes Hannah's teeth and puts her shoes on.
• Lug bunch of stuff out to car.
• Come back for Hannah. Drop at daycare very late, like 7:45, despite "early" start to the day.
• Get to work at 8:20. Supposed to be at work at 8:00, but never happens.
• Turn on computer. Get coffee (frappucino, actually).
  
• Drink coffee while spending an hour and a half combing through 226 (no kidding) unread emails. Do not read all emails. Feel annoyed at email culture.
• Go to meetings from 10 to noon.
• Go for sushi with friend. (High point of work day, to be sure. Spicy tuna rolls are awesome.)
• Go to meeting from 2 to 3.
• Try to get work done from 3 to 4. Not very successful.
  
• Go for performance review with boss at 4:00. Boss is stuck in other meeting. Wait 15 minutes for boss to show up. Realize that review is going to last past 5:00 now, which starts customary "I will be late picking Hannah up from daycare" panic.
• Have very nice review. Learn that I possibly laugh too much (I do have a tendency to laugh all the time, which I suppose does make it sound like I think what I just said was a joke - even though I've always thought it was charming and disarming), but am otherwise quite capable, well-respected and doing a good job. Need to work on establishing strategy, which is part of the new job and was not part of the old one. All in all, pretty good.
• Get out of review at 5:20. Get to car, in the steady rain, at 5:25. Realize I will probably be late picking Hannah up, and if I'm not, she will for sure at least be the last kid at daycare. Again.
• Deal with slow, annoying drivers for 34.5 minutes. Pull into daycare at approximately 5:59:30 and race to door in continuing rain.
• Feel very happy to see Hannah, who's happy to see me.
• Drive home. Get call from Brock that he has to work late and will not be home till after 9:00.
• Realize that there is not enough time to make the taco casserole I'd planned to make with Hannah this evening.
• Give up and get fish sticks and Smiles out of the freezer. Realize we eat a lot of meals that can be dipped in ketchup. But it has been a long time since we had Smiles, and Hannah likes them, and they are tasty. We like our dinner even if it's sort of ridiculous for a grown-up to eat fish sticks and shaped potatoes.
  
• Give Hannah bubble bath. Fun. :)
  
• Watch Dr. Jiggle & Mr. Sly episode of Veggie Tales TV show on DVR with Hannah. Sing along to "The Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" at the end.
  
• Get Hannah to brush teeth.
• Read two stories, Color Kittens and Goodnight, Little Bear, both of which are really old Little Golden Books and also kind of annoying after the 87th reading. But still enjoyable because Hannah likes them.
• Sort laundry. Start washer, only to realize that there is still a load of laundry sitting in the washer from two days ago that needs to be dried.
• Put laundry in dryer. Put more laundry in washer.
• Blog instead of doing reading for school, which started last week.

So...it's been kind of a crazy day. A "fish sticks and shaped potatoes" kind of day.

GO-bama!

You guys, we have GOT to elect this man. We've just GOT to.

Obama's acceptance speech was fantastic. Even the Republican operative/contributing analyst on NBC said as much. (And then we stopped listening to analysts, because they are generally annoying, and I'd rather just formulate my own thoughts.)

I have so many favorite lines: "Eight is enough!" "Change doesn't come from Washington; change goes to Washington." "America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this." It didn't make me cry the way his "This is the moment" speech in June, but it made me happy and hopeful. And it was really wonderful to feel that way.

His speech was smart, tough and inspiring. I think he's smart, tough and inspiring. More than 80,000 people showed up just to hear the guy talk. We've GOT to elect him.

File this under "that figures"

On Monday, I bought myself flowers for the first time ever.

On Tuesday, buckets of dozens of free bouquets of cutflowers showed up where I work.

Not that I'm really complaining...I just find it funny.

Flowers

One more thing - to combat my crabbiness, I bought myself flowers for the first time ever today. I happen to live with a lovely person who quite often buys/sends me flowers - much more often than my friends' husbands seem to send them flowers. And he usually sends them to me at work, where I have to pick them up from the reception desk and then carry them all through the building back to my desk, while people stop me and ask me who sent me flowers and why, and comment about how pretty the flowers are and that their husbands/partners/significant others never send them flowers. This, overall, makes me feel even more loved and spoiled than one might typically feel when receiving flowers.

However, today I bought a $5 bouquet of the sunniest, cheeriest yellow cut mums at Target all for myself, and I would highly recommend it. I totally cheered up just looking at their happy yellow color. Than Hannah and I brought them home and I cut the stems way down and stuffed them in this cool purple vase that I have, and the combo of the bright yellow flowers bursting out of the purple vase was somehow even cheerier.

I got my money's worth. :)

A thankful heart is a happy heart

So, the title of this post is a song that's in the Madame Blueberry episode of Veggie Tales. It's a lesson about being thankful for what you have.

After several viewings of this episode, and having the aforementioned song stuck in my head for days and days and days, I have decided to actually listen to it. This is because I have been super-crabby about work for the past few days. (I think I have done a good job controlling the crabbiness outside of work.)

Suffice it to say that my work life is changing again and, after just taking my new job a couple of months ago, my responsibilities are shifting a bit. Although the logical part of my brain sees that there may be some good opportunities lurking in this situation, the illogical part of my brain would just like things to stay the same for 5 minutes so I have a chance to get good at what I'm doing without having to add more new stuff on top of new stuff. That's the part of my brain that's been making me crabby for the past week.

So I have decided to try very hard to be like Madame Blueberry, and be thankful for what I have: a good job at a company that's been around a long time (not to mention the wonderful non-work things I have, like my awesome family and good friends and a nice roof over my head). This is not to say I have totally banished the crabbiness, but my hope is that it will help my attitude recover a bit.

Also, I realized that school starts next week. Instead of panicking, I am also trying very hard to be thankful that I have the means to advance my education and learn new things.

I don't think this rosy view will last very long, as I am cynical and sarcastic by nature, but at least I'm making an effort here.

I am still not, however, thankful for what I have to go do now, which is work on my budgets for the next fiscal year. I just can't be thankful for budgeting. It is one of my least favorite things.

But I'm thankful for everything else. Really.