On my last working day before Christmas, my Karma sent to me...

12 faxes from yesterday (when the fax jammed and the pharmacist never noticed...)
11 people who wanted me to ring up a shopping cart full of crap (even though they had no prescriptions to pick up..)
10 insurance issues (requiring long hold times)
9 clarifications from providers (including who the heck wrote this?)
8 waiters whose prescriptions couldn't be processed (see #2)
7 people looking for shoehorns, OTC drugs they didn't know the name of, hairspray, or bathrooms
6 backordered medications (metoprolol succinate 50 mg, ethedent, sodium fluoride ring a bell?)
5 calls for help (both printers not working!!!!!)
4 doctors not in system (who then had to be added completely)
3 refill requests for prescriptions with no refills left
2 broken printers (requiring 4 calls for support and one technician who talked to herself incessantly and had to be ordered to stop so I could download prescriptions from the interactive voice response)
aaaaaaand ONE sick technician who called out & had to be replaced (with the tech who volunteered to work a 12-hour day-THANKS, MY FRIEND!!!!!)
Falalala freaking la!

First Snow

And we haven't even got the leaves out...
Three inches and some with a crust of ice- it was treacherous out there today. So glad I bought 100 lb of rock salt yesterday!
Bren had a half day at work and made the mistake of calling me. One easy guilt trip later, I got him to haul all six bags of yard waste (including the nasty, thorny marsh rose) off to the dump. Of course, he had to shovel out the driveway in order to do this. Hey, I did the walk and my car. The fourth trip, we brought all my trash & recycling as well-never got to do it this weekend as I ended up working. Then, post office- sent all my packages & weigh-ables-he fell asleep in the car. Then I shovelled off the roof. The pitch is too low for snow to slide off, but quite sufficient enough for me to slide off. It gave Bren the heebie-jeebies! Good thing I had chili-he was starving after all that work.
As he was leaving, we did the rest of the drive and the front walk.
THEN I vacuumed the house, washed the floors, finished the laundry, wrapped more gifts, cleared off the tables of miscellaneous junk and discovered that the cats broke a glass candlestick in their last, spectacular catfight. And they seemed to have christened every room with a hairball. Also re-potted a sansevaria that decided to grow sideways and lifted itself completely out of its pot- split it in two. Not a lick of dirt on the roots, go figure. Also potted a Moses-In-The-Cradle that had rooted in a jar. And while all this was taking place, the soup I had simmering on the stove bubbled and filled the house with a wonderful odor that piques the interest of the kitties. Tomato base, filled with sweet potato, Maine potato, zucchini, summer squash, carrots, kidney beans and brown rice. YUM and hot!
Now I work 5 days straight- 54 hours straight. YUK.
Hopefully, it won't be so slippery on my way in tomorrow. I'm worried about Friday- I may just have to stay in Manchester-IF I can find a room! The hotels are full of people displaced from the ice storm who still have no power...

The Dark is Rising.

The days are darker and darker, so my pyro mode is in full tilt when I am home, which isn't very often. When I am, I am usually in bed. I managed a few days at home when I just stayed on the couch and alternated between clicker and laptop.
Even with limited time, I have still managed to clean up the house (mostly), do some engraving (got me some nice Celtic knotwork frames for the art I bought with my earnings), get my window candles set up with timers so they go on automatically, get the tree up (the boys hauled up the boxes for me) and drive to a bunch more medical appointments.
I have caught a few movies; notably "The Seeker" which is a movie version of Susan Coopers series "The Dark Is Rising". Not so good. I also finally saw "Clerks" after all these years. I moved a bunch of comedies up the list because I have been in such a black and foul mood.
I dreamed about my nephew's significant other. We were at a function and all these politicians kept coming up to talk to me, completely ignoring her. I would painstakingly stop the conversation, introduce her and the conversation would continue, with her adding congenial, intelligent commentary. This happened three times or so, then I extricated her and we left for another function. I was so aggravated that she was being ignored, treated impolitely, and forced into invisibility; the message of the dream was clear. Her opinion is important, and she should be paid attention to and listened to. She is generally fairly quiet, but her observations are always dead on. They were up with the kids last weekend, so I told her my dream. Right after I did , the streetlight we were standing under went out (cue Twilight Zone music).
The kids were pretty funny. The two-year old ripped the heads of all the Barbie dolls and placed the torsos in the tree like naked plastic ornaments. The town had a big celebration in the center of town, culminating in a sing-along and Santa turning on all the town's Christmas lights. The girls were right up front belting out songs while his nibs cowered when he saw the 6-foot Elmo. A good time was had by all.
I managed to get most of my Christmas shopping done. I have a few donations to make, since some of the family doesn't like exchanging gifts anymore. I have already given a few. I have already got a few very unexpected gifts in the mail- a wonderful book "Postcards from Heaven" from Dorry (whose son is in the dedications) and a video about Ireland from Ros, who is campaigning for me to go there again this spring.
Kitties 2 and 3 had their annual checkups, vaccinations and microchipping. Dev lost two pounds, and is facing some extractions, so I am hoping it's just competition from the others at the food dish and sore teeth. Sorcha was so distraught, I had to lie down with her for a few hours to calm her. The clicker fell, and she bolted upstairs in panic..
I am not looking forward to Christmas. Things will never be the same after this one, so I just can't seem to embrace the season. I am sad, and angry, and always so very tired.
The dark is winning.

We had a huge ice storm the other night. I set my cell phone as an alarm just in case. Good thing- the house was dark and cold when I awoke. I slept poorly, as did the kitties, from all the sleet, wind and creaking of the old house. The drive was slick with ice. The big birch was laying flat in the drive, but it was not broken off, just weighed down with the burden of ice. I almost made a cup of tea but left in a hurry instead. Big mistake. The drive to work was beautiful- a winter wonderland, but the trees were all bent over the road, and many branches lay in the way. There were few other people on the road, so driving like Pole Position wasn't an issue as I dodged all the downed limbs. One one road, a car must have narrowly dodged a limb that fell, just missing his car, and he drove into a field and got bogged down in mud halfway up the hubcaps. Four times I got nearly to the end of a road only to encounter a huge tree blcoking the road, had to turn around and go back. I winged my way based on internal navigation until I got to the highway. I made it to work only 15 minutes late, only to find they had no power. They had an auxiliary generator that enabled us to have a few dim lights and the use of some cash registers. We raised the gate manually, and all I could do was ring people out. No computers, so I could do absolutely nothing in terms of filling. The store phones didn't work, but my phones did, so I had a lot of people calling me asking if we were open, did we sell generators, propane, all kinds of disaster-type stuff we need in states of emergencies. I was a little hungry, and very cold. The powers that be refused to close the store, so for 12 hours, I was a cheerleader for the customers in the dark. I worked on my development plan by hand, I put away the order, I researched all the refrigerated drugs to learn how long an excursion they can handle out of refigeration, and I read some pharmacy journals and did some continuing eds by hand. It was so cold, I finally gave up and put my fleece on top of my woolen turtleneck (I was SO glad I changed at the last minute into the woolen sweater!) under my labcoat. I was so glad to get into my car and blast the heater, I thought my toes would never thaw out. When I finally made it home (still lots of limbs on the side of the road), I was greeted by the cheery candles in the windows and the knowledge that my power was back on. My birch tree is recovered and reaching for the sky again. I turned up the heat, put on fleece jammies, ate an egg and went straight to bed.
Today I still feel cold but I let myself jack the heat up to 65. It was bitter outside when I let the kitties out. They didn't want to go out again. Neither did I- did some minor paperwork things but mostly watched movies- Boondock Saints and Elf.
The dark is rising.