You know, waiting for something, anything, to happen. The other day I looked back to my last day at the college, realizing it will be eight months next week since I've had any sort of paying gig. I mean honestly, how did the weeks and months get away from me? The business isn't taking off like I'd imagined; I attribute that to my overwhelming lack of selling skills. I'm working on it, and on the website. This morning I awoke to rays of sun shining gently into the seven windows of my tea room, so I packed up my reams of information, scribbles and writer's block and tromped in there. Miracle of miracles, I was able to burn through three of the five pages I want to start with in an hour and a half. I've returned to it periodically, rereading and editing a word or phrase here and there but for the most part I'm still really pleased with it.

Tomorrow, our family will pull out the party hats and the good silver to celebrate the following: Mother's Day, Father's Day and the birthdays of my sister, brother-in-law and niece. The Boy and I are the only people attending not involved with one of those fetes. Weird. We skipped my brother-in-law's birthday in April because we always have parties at my parent's house in the country, and Mom was recovering from gallbladder surgery. I was making trips out to sneak in, cook and bake and watch the good shows on their satellite while Mom slept for days on end. Her fourth (top) incision wound up getting infected, which meant a trip (well four, actually) to Emerg to have all the badness squished out. Wow, that might have just been TMI, so I'll stop there. She's fine, though. Back to gardening, maybe a little soon, but it doesn't seem to have done any damage. One note to anyone considering the gallbladder surgery that will only result in the four holes: if, after you come out of recovery, you find that they had to increase the size of the top hole to get the bladder out, DO NOT listen to the surgeon when he books you for a post-operative follow up in 10 days. Demand to be seen in five or six days instead. Mom found out the hard way that those who are blessed with the larger incisions are almost 60% more likely to develop infection.
Just a tip.

So, back to our regularly scheduled program. My sister suffers from five different maladies, one of the most painful being fibromyalgia. She's presently attempting to reduce her pain through diet. At my prompting, she and Mom went to a seminar by a nutritionist who is a specialist in fibro. The thing that convinced me her billing is for real is the fact that she suffers from the ailment. My sister sat in the front, and at the end Maryanne approached her to tell her she could see the pain on her face every second. She took her under her wing, walking her through the grocery store to point out those items that would work together to lessen her symptoms. No yeast, sugar, caffeine, certain vegetables, wheat, blahblahblah. Basically, she's had to go back to square one with four food items allowed for the first 18 days. Then, one by one, she reintrodces new things to see if they are a potential pain perpetrator. This factoid brings me around to my actual point.

It's her birthday celebration and she can't even have cake. Or pie. Or flan, for heaven's sake. Not even the very bland (compared to say, a cheesecake) Apple Cake that my Gran used to make. She might be able to manage some strawberries. Whee. Mom says I should just be grateful that her pain is lessening more each day. I, the sweets junkie, am trying really hard to put myself in her shoes and reprioritize. Maybe if I think back to high school and get a picture of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs....

Yeah, better to eat almost nothing festive and be able to sit in a beautiful gazebo in the quiet country in the fresh air, enjoying the company of your family who loves you. Ignore the tummy rumbles.

My niece has finally figured out that the person who's birthday we're gathering to celebrate gets to choose the dinner menu. My job is to create a two or three layer white cake with white icing and almost an entire container of rainbow sprinkles. Heaven help me, the kid's got my genes in there somewhere :) So, for now, I will count my blessings and work hard toward some happy, successful ending. It's up there on the horizon, I'm certain. That'll be when I can finally exhale.

Posted at 4:30 p.m.