Damn.

That's all I can think of for a title. The last few weeks have been... off. I know you know what I mean - nothing's terribly wrong, but everything takes longer than it should, is harder to do than it should be, and I continue to fall behind. Then I collapse in a heap on the weekend and get even FURTHER behind. It doesn't help that the stuff that's looming over my head is the BIG STUFF. Finishing up dealing with the death stuff is the big ugly right now; mostly taxes and mortgage. I think it's an obvious understatement when I say that the two entities involved don't really give a fig about my personal loss or our family's collective failure to plan for a rainy day. (Additional information: what century is this? The IRS isn't even allowed to give me a fax number until I MAIL them a request in writing for the information I need. I think they go out of their way to find useless people, or maybe just to make useless policies. Soon they'll outsource THEIR customer "service" to a call center in India too. Irate much? Who, me?)

On days like these, sometimes you need purple pancakes. (Yeah, all my photos are for crap. Sue me.)


Or a beautiful sunset.


Or a goofy kid modeling the lastest in Spiderman .


(As a side note: don't you love the way a kid smiles with his whole body? You can only see one eye but you know he's grinning from ear to ear.)


What else makes me happy these days? Hmm, well, it ain't this:


It *might* be this:


For those who don't know/care, that is nearly four pounds of my beloved Sage, last seen looking like this. I sent her off to Spinderella's, and they washed her again and carded her up, and damned if I don't want to dump out that bag and roll around nekkid in her. I won't, though - I have big plans for my lady and we can't be matting her up again.

Big plans. I think that might be part of my general malaise these days. Spring is here, as Cookie is so crabby about, and I feel like things need to be happening. You know what I mean? It's the same restless feeling I get in the fall. I feel like it's downright primal sometimes - the need to Get Moving, to Do Big Things, to fix it all at once. Early spring and late fall aren't times for baby steps, but that's all I'm capable of right now. I have set some things in motion and I want to see them come to fruition NOW. Today. Not next fall, not later, but Right This Very Minute. Whatever zen I had going on before has been replaced by a petulant child with the gimmes. It's a problem. I'm working on it.

And now for something Completely Different. I have an office phone. My boss ordered it. He apparently didn't specify that it needed to work, because no one bothered to put a phone jack in my cube - they just left the phone on the desk, with the disconnected cable. But I betcha they closed that work order...