I know, I know.  I have been awful about posting lately.  Or taking pictures, for that matter.

I’ve been enjoying the kids being home, and I’ve been super busy with work - most days I’m getting home around 6:30.  Today, though, I’m home - sick.  I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck.  I don’t know how I got sick, but I got REALLY sick this time.  Horrible stuffiness alternating with a very drippy nose, a very painful chest cough, no sense of smell whatsoever, sharp pain in my head, achy achy achy, and super sensitive skin.  I’ve been sofa-ridden most of the day so far but we have a new person coming in and I have stuff to do for that still.

So.  This is me promising to be more loquacious after I get over whatever this is I have.

My family comes  home tonight!  Yippee!  It’s been so lonely.  I want them here to enjoy the great weather - it’s been about 85°F every day and sunny, so sunny, but just entirely too quiet without them.

Both of our cats love being outside and will take whatever opportunity they can to get outside. However, of the two, Ala Spit is the more determined to get outside. She has figured out how to open up any screen in the house by laying her weight against it until it pops up, and in the bathroom can open the little window if it’s open just a crack and get out the screen in there as well. I’ve come home from work and found the back door inexplicably open - certain that I closed all the doors before I left for work. It continues to be unsettling to come home to an open window or door and this will be resolved (the door, at least - I’ve already resolved the window problem and lock all the windows before I leave the house).

However, one day recently I came home from a trip to the grocery store and found the back door ajar. I came in and as I always do if a door is open, I peeked around the house to see if anything was out of order. There was nothing unusual until I got in the living room and opened the vertical blinds.

There was a rabbit on my doorstep. My hunter had escaped and brought me her prize, a white rabbit, now dirty, ratty, with matted fur.

Since then she has been acting somewhat unusually, pacing around the house around midnight, loudly yowling.Tonight I got ready to go back to the movies (Harry Potter 5 was ruined last night by an incompetent person who couldn’t figure out how to play the movie properly so the first half hour or so was ruined by either being cut off, overstretched, or by being without audio. So we got free tickets to see it again tonight in the theater where hopefully we’ll actually get to see the whole movie.) and when I came out of the bathroom from doing my hair, Spitty Kitty was at it again, loudly yowling in the living room. I tiptoed down the hallway until I caught a glimpse of what was causing her unusual behavior.

She dragged the rabbit that had appeared on my doorstep a week earlier inside and stood pushing it with her nose, yelling at it for what I can only begin to imagine.

And I thought my kids were weird.

Just picked up my copy of Harry Potter - my camera was so happy for me that I don’t know how it  happened but the pictures, they just happened, while I was driving.  Must be magic.

Have I ever mentioned that however proud I am of Navy heritage, there is one thing that I think is nothing less than Just Plain Dumb, and that is called “Whites”.

As in a white uniform. White shirt. White pants. White.

Seriously, WHO wears white clothes, top to bottom, every day for 6 months? Come on now. And can I just say, whomever it was that decided to put us in all white, head to toe, must have been a man thinking, “Those women want equality, I’ll give them equality!” because SERIOUSLY, I can think of at least 6 weeks of the 6 months of wearing whites where half of my workday is spent in a paranoid, frenzied state of worrying whether I will be sneaking out of the office with a duffle bag behind me.

Today was a particularly not good day for whites. First it was commented to me that I must be very brave to vacuum out my car in my whites, to which my response was: I must have been REALLY brave to have gotten IN my car in my whites in the state it was in. And then it was commented that maybe I should not be PUTTING OUT A FIRE in my whites.

It was an eventful day, to say the least.

It was a very small fire and was probably caused by some idiot throwing their cigarette butt out of their car because it was right by the parking lot and it was dried leaves. IDIOTS IDIOTS IDIOTS. Smoke all you want but have just a wee little bit of common sense not to throw your burning butt ANYWHERE outside, much less a place full of dry leaves when it hasn’t rained in who-knows-how-long. If you need a reason not to, please, think about my whites.

It’s Harry Potter Weekend. It may make me a dork, but I am so excited about this weekend. Harry Potter 5 at the drive-in theater (the ONE cool thing about this base! a real drive in! And the weather is so wonderful in the evenings that you can bring a blanket and sit RIGHT IN FRONT and it is so cool.) on Friday and then to the bookstore first thing in the morning right after the movie! to get my pre-ordered copy of the last Harry Potter book. B was so thoughtful and brought that to me at work a few months ago, when they first announced the release date.

I have the feeling I’m not going to get much sleep til I finish the book.

Last weekend was Gibraltar weekend. We have a reservist here for 2 weeks and since I don’t have any family here I’ve been able to show her around a bit more than I normally would. We went to Gibraltar on Saturday, with my very bad advice that we didn’t need our passports. I was apparently confused because when we went through in December, they wouldn’t stamp our passport - but duh, we still needed it. I’ll blame it on my post-migraine haze (so far just 1 this week, yay.).

The monkeys were out in force, many with infants that were so cute and, well, monkeyish. A few pictures, you ask? Of course!

I am very glad that this week is over.

Monday: Woke up with Migraine.

Tuesday: Migraine came on mid-morning.

Wednesday: Migraine came on just before leaving work. Went home, passed out, woke up from the pain, called mom, couldn’t keep it together, went to the emergency room, got IV with Phenergan, Benadryl and Toradol.  Mostly cleared it up.

Thursday: Felt better.  Probably from all the meds.  Thank God, too, because we had an Admiral visiting from Washington, DC - my boss’s boss’s boss.  Who next year will be my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss.  Ie., the Head Boss.  Of the JAG Corps.

Friday: Woke up with a migraine.

Yeah!  Great week.  At least I can say I’ve had peace and quiet in which to suffer, at least while I’m at home.  And work has been great, aside from feeling crappy almost every day.  I really do love my job, and for that I am extremely grateful.

I’m also feeling extremely grateful that my dad is continuing to do well.  Some fluid in the lungs but not more than what’s normal.  I curse living so far away.