Hi!! Remember me?

My oh my it's been a long time since I put up a post. So long, in fact, that I had to go through all the steps to figure out how to get back in to this thing because I had forgotten my username and password!

So, what's new with me? Quite a lot and not so much.

The drama in my family continues and I had thought that when the time came, meaning when my Aunt with cancer that stirred all this crap up finally lost her fight with cancer, it would all fall to the wayside. Yeah, that didn't work. She passed away on Friday, November 27, 2009. She was 55 years old. She had a hell of a run with it and it was good for a long time but the last couple of months she had been in and out of the hospital on a regular basis and was moved to hospice about a month ago. It's kind of bitter sweet. I mean, I feel good about her being at peace and finally done with the pain but at the same time I wasn't really as prepared for it as I thought I was. I think most of that is because I had to hold myself together for the sake of my daughter. She knew Aunt Jill was sick but I hadn't told her exactly how sick she had been recently. If there's anything I've learned in this journey of motherhood with her it's that the less information she knows leading in to something the better off we all are. I mean, I could have told her I was just waiting for "the call" but all that would have done is make her a blubbering mess. We got our crying out and were able to move forward. This one I can explain. She had pancreatic cancer.

Work is chugging right along. It's the holiday season which means this is the time a lot of people decide they can't stand to be with their spouse anymore and want a divorce yesterday. It's a pretty crappy way to have to go through the holidays, especially if there are kids involved, but it's job security for me folks. Sorry.

Things on the home front have been more or less status qua. We've had our ups and downs but we're still plugging along. We celebrated our 11th anniversary in September by doing nothing. He thought we had agreed not to buy anything for each other so I got a card, the exact same card I got for him as a matter of fact. Apparently I missed that conversation that we had just like so many others that we've supposedly had in the past. Don't know, I guess my crystal ball is on the fritz.

The weather here in Illinois is starting to feel like winter. Which I hate. And I'm having a real hard time getting into the Christmas spirit. I've only bought 2 gifts and have absolutely no motivation to do anything more. I suppose it would help if I had lists to go off of and didn't have to be the one to do all the picking and buying for the family. But, there again I screwed myself and can't complain, even though I still do. It pisses me off when my husband and his brother get credit for the gifts for their parents when it's me doing all the dirty work. They typically don't even know what they've bought until it's unwrapped. At least my mother-in-law knows how it happens that she always gets what she wants but hasn't asked for.

That's about it for now. Gotta get back to the grind!