Um, just one more thing...

Two friends said they actually LIKE the stressy posts. So, stressy it is:

-- Why THIS WEEK of all weeks, did we have a virus attack one of our servers?? (Part of my company's job is that we host some web sites that we've designed, although we don't have servers OR technical people on-site. I.E., ME, I am not a technical person and I don't know how to fix it -- but I'll get to field the phone calls of pissed-off clients.) The one guy from our group who seems to enjoy fussing over and "deploying solutions to" this kind of problem is, of course, out of town. *Sing-song voice:* LOVE-LY!

-- And BTW, corporate IT who run our email: GET REMOTE WEBMAIL TO WORK, dammit! We're in the middle of a weekend server-virus-crisis but can't check our email because.... I don't know why because. Because our multi-national company still runs a crappy version of LOTUS NOTES instead of Outlook, like the rest of the free world.

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That's it for real stress this Monday morning. And do I really care? No. This weekend in family-world, we knocked a whole bunch of crap off the list, like mailing Christmas cards (whose idea...? nevermind), getting haircuts, buying and wrapping a few more gifts, and baking. I made Lemon Poppyseed bread, which is really more like cake, and I'll post the recipe soon, AND I made my favorite peanut-chocolate "cussters" as AJ is calling them. That recipe:

Melt some chocolate bark. Dump in some cocktail peanuts. Stir. Spoon into cluster shapes on wax paper. The end.

I also had lunch with a friend Saturday, and laughed and laughed with her, and then attended a really fun Christmas party with some other friends -- a cast of characters for sure -- that made me COUNT MY BLESSINGS. (Swistle: haHA! You're so right! But still.) Let's just say there were cards and appetizers and one man farting outright, which was gross and so NOT in the Christmas spirit, but... still funny, and I felt like PART of the group, and the women talked in one room while the men looked at a video game in the other room until we raised our eyebrows to the vaulted ceilings to get them to quit and come be merry with us. And they were. AJ was beyond cute and everyone told me so. I think he may even have beaten out a 10-month-old for receiving the Most Attention. Look, he may not be very socially active among his own generation, but the kid knows how to work a room of adults, I'll give him that. Could be a very handy skill one day.

Finally, one of my favorite things was putting my Christmas china front and center in the china cabinet on Sunday while AJ napped. It looks so festive and it makes me surprisingly happy to putter around --gently... ever...so...gently...-- with bone china. :)