Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Eh. Not much to say

I haven't had much to say lately. I thought that I would spend my long weekend (and oh it was blissful to have 4 days away from the office) blogging at least some. But it came and went and I don't think I even signed on to the computer. Work is slowly returning to normal and I don't have thoughts of my co-worker who died first thing in the morning and last thing at night any more but I'm sort of just going through the motions right now. Maybe it is the time of year with the shorter days or the "Season of Obligations" that is making me want to be anywhere but at the office but I'm not sure.

On some level I am really schizophrenic about this time of year. I'm not big on re-decorating the house for a month [part of that is because Jesus is not and never has been my Lord and Savior despite my Christian childhood] but I like to look at everyone else's decorations, I like having a Christmas tree in the house but I hate putting it up and decorating it, I don't like to be bothered to send cards but I do it anyway, I struggle mightily to select an appropriate gift that the recipient wants/can use and I get peeved when people give me gifts that they gave no thought to (and that's a really bitchy selfish horrible feeling because I should be pleased [and I'm sincere here] that they cared enough to get something for me at all.)

I saved this post for a while and now the weather has changed (it's seasonably cold now), we've done much of our Christmas shopping, we aren't going crazy with the decorating this year, and I just am feeling better about things in general. It's a Sunday morning, I've had my coffee (and bizarrely, I might have chipped a molar on my granola), and now I'm sitting here looking at the sunny day with my favorite poochie sitting on the arm of the recliner. We have only one obligation today and otherwise I get to putter around. Puttering makes me content. I guess in the long run content is a good thing to be.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Life Changes in an Instant

I usually follow the rule of not blogging about work or the family. It seems to have worked for me so far (in the brief time I've been blogging). Today I will break that rule. On Tuesday, November 14 a co-worker and friend died suddenly of a massive heart attack. She was 41 and leaves behind a 19-year-old son, a husband, her parents, a sister, a brother, and many, many others. I won't name her out of respect for her family. She was a good friend, a conscientious co-worker, and a wonderful person. She touched many lives in a quiet way. I've had to tell various clients of mine with whom she worked about her death and they all had nice things to say about how pleasant their interactions with her had always been. She was a smiling presence in the office and is conspicuous in her absence. I like my job and when I got up in the morning I didn't necessarily think "WOW, I can't WAIT to get to the office" but I also didn't have strong feelings against going there. When I was there it was a pleasant place to work with chit-chat, smiles, and occasional laughter. All the joy has been sucked out of the office now. On Tuesday we will close the office and attend her funeral en masse and then it will be time to return to "business as usual" but I don't know if we can right now.

Even though many of us spend 8+ hours a day with our co-workers we may not see them or think of them when we aren't at the office. I know that, in general, I don't. We all go off to our own lives at night and on the weekends and often our lives are quite different from our co-workers. Now I can't stop thinking of my co-worker and her family and work will never be quite the same.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Doesn't he have better things to do?

This story just horrifies me. Doesn't the Kansas AG have anything better to do? For example, he could investigate this.

As someone who has had more than my fair share of GYN problems I don't need a politician running for re-election to start digging around in my medical records even if they don't have my name on them. I don't see him digging around to find out if every case of STDs has been reported, even though some of those could have come from rape or incest and would be evidence of a crime. He is doing this to scare women away from abortion clinics even though his personal beliefs should have nothing to do with his job prosecuting CRIMINALS. These women and their doctors are not breaking the law. As long as people are abiding by the laws in their state, what they do with their bodies is not the business of ANY AG. People seem to forget that women have minds of their own and are quite able to decide what to do with their own bodies. Leave the decision of what to do about a pregnancy to the woman who is pregnant, anyone she wants to discuss it with, and any doctors involved. No one else has the right to interfere.