August 20, 2006 by Amy

Thank goodness it wasn’t MY mailbox!

I was just getting ready to plop my butt on the sofa and watch some Season Three of SATC (a small reward for working my ass off to clean the entire house yesterday) and I realized that I haven’t posted since Thursday morning. Wow. That’s a long freakin’ time.

I wasn’t in the office much of Friday. We had our monthly O’Fallon staff meeting in the morning, where I presented without breaking a sweat or freaking out. That’s major progress for me. I’ve also managed to slow down my rate of speech, which up til now I thought was impossible. I’ve improved so much that I no longer dread presenting, and actually look forward to it. It helps tremendously that I now have a year at the spa under my belt and can speak from experience. It also helps to be passionate about what you’re presenting.

I even got call from Peg later in the day…she told me how she’s noticed my improvement with public speaking. That meant so much to me. Peg has been not only my aunt but my career mentor for just about as long as I can remember, so besides the whole “new job” stress and “working for family” stress, I have been under the “I now see my mentor every day…and she’s my boss” stress. It’s all been very good stress, but stress nonetheless.

Friday was fun in that I had salad and pizza for lunch, and then salad and pizza for dinner. Shhh, don’t tell M. He’s all about not eating too much of the same thing. I, however, am perfectly content to gorge myself on salad and pizza for days on end. Not all pizza is alike, you see, so as long as you mix it up it’s like having a whole new meal. Besides, the salad was Caesar at lunch and a homemade job with low-fat thousand island for dinner. Totally different, too.

Saturday was, as I already mentioned, Cleaning Day. I did start the day with a walk to Schnuck’s with The Bug, so we could get fresh garlic, onions, stewed tomatoes and ground beef for my infamous spaghetti sauce. Spaghetti sauce and chili are about the only two things I can prepare in the kitchen any more (other than salads, of course, which a monkey could do) thanks to having M around as my own personal gourmet chef. So, anyway, I felt very French Women Don’t Get Fat by walking to the market with my baby to get food for dinner.

Made my sauce (even going so far as to brown the garlic in some olive oil before adding it to the sauce…yum!) and got to cleaning, in between caring for and playing with Zozo. It was a great day, although my hands do still smell like garlic, which was good at first but is now highly annoying.

Later, Grammy came over, then Aunt Katie and Uncle Shawn, and we all had dinner before Uncle Shawn and M headed out to the Ram’s pre-season game. The girls stayed home and made some weddin’ plans. While at the game, Uncle Shawn asked M to be a groomsman, which is way cool, and Katie and I saw an idiot kid take out a neighbor’s mailbox and give lawn jobs to that neighbor and the one next door. We heard the crash and I knew instantly, “Mailbox!” having experienced my own mailbox being taken out twice now. Of course, the idiot kid didn’t stop. The woman who lost her mailbox refused to call the police, as her husband is out of town. I don’t understand that. Women who are powerless to act without their men. As everyone who knows me knows, I ain’t one of those women. I had my own cordless phone in my hand and was itching to call, but she begged me not to. “He’s gone and I just don’t want to open up a can of worms.” WTF? Some idiot just took out your mailbox and half your front yard, you have two eyewitnesses who can identify the car, you know the subdivision he turned in to (another witness came back to tell us that), and you don’t want to “open up a can of worms?”

I see women like this and I realize that’s why it took us so long to get the vote. Good grief.

Today was our usual trip to mass, breakfast, trip to Sam’s, and home to do more chores. I’ve got all the laundry done but the bedding (it’s in the washer now, on the freakin’ “sanitary” setting which is awesome but takes two hours and ten minutes just to wash), and it’s all folded and put away, which is fantastic because sometimes I don’t get to it and it’s no fun living out of a laundry basket all week. I know all of you out there have done it, so don’t sniff and act like I’m anything less than a domestic goddess for admitting to it.

M has run to Home Depot, and bless his heart he’s bringing back Taco Bell for us for lunch. It doesn’t take much to make me happy! (Sometimes.)