Robert strikes again. :P I can't believe he makes the whole corn thing sound so bad.

And then tonight, when trying to explain the episode to OSM's friends, I mentioned that my mom and I were the ones making the corn, Rob chimes in, "Oh, so now you're blaming your poor mother."

Of course, it wasn't her fault any more than it was mine that we let the water boil out of the pot in which we were steaming the corn. OSM and I were watching Two Towers :) Who could blame us? Hmmm?

We have more fresh fruit in the house than this place has seen probably in the entire 4 years I've lived here. And the fruit flies to prove it.

To deal with two quarts of rapidly deteriorating strawberries, I sliced and froze half of them for smoothies and set aside the good ones for strawberries and cream. Last night, after I wrestled the SWG account away from Rob to continue dying at the hands of goobers (ok, gubers; but I am like so sure I know who they're named after, cause they're cute and have dimples ;>), Rob decided to prepare the cream for the strawberries. I had bought a pint of real heavy whipping cream to use in our beautiful Kitchen Aid. Rob sighed and noted that if he had been with me, he'd have bought Cool Whip.

"They don't sell Cool Whip at Trader Joes," I said scornfully, to which Rob uttered something nonsensical to me about men and shopping and Cool Whip.

Rob tossed the pint into the Kitchen Aid, I added a bit of sugar, and he switched it on. Then he came to sit behind me and whine that I was hogging the SWG account and when would it be his turn, ::sigh::, since he was paying for it. Behind us there came a "thup-thup" sound, which made us both furrow our brows till we recalled the whipping cream. Rob dashes into the kitchen and puts his mouth on the side of his face.

"Er, I made..." he turns off the machine and pulls off the wire whisk, "...butter!" It's a very nice, sweet cream butter, on account of the sugar I added. We had it on our pancakes this morning.

It was pretty funny; we ended up having our strawberries with the cheesecake I also (thank goodness) got at Trader Joe's. :) All's well that ends with cheesecake!

Oh, a couple other things before I run upstairs to do OSM's laundry....

I miss Stephmoonie :( Isn't your book done yet so you can come back to your desperate friends who miss your blog?


And I finished updating my paralegal teacher's website. He's on holiday till right before school starts so I'll put the pages onto a CD for him to upload when he returns. It's not much, but it'll be three nice little pages :) I'll put a link to it so y'all can go "Oooh! Aaaah!" when it's up :)

It is a sad thing when one of the highlights of having your sainted mother visit you is her handicapped parking pass. :/

Well, that's not really true. There've been other highlights :) But it is rather nice, in a guilty kind of way, for us to whisk into a handicap stall near the entrance of wherever we're going. The other night, en route to take our sainted mother (OSM) and her friends to Cirque du Soleil, we stopped at one of my favorite restaurants for dinner. Vince's has really great Italian food and happens to have a restaurant up the hill from the Cirque site, so we went there. As we pulled up toward the entrance, someone right before us parked in the only handicapped stall. I prepared to let OSM and the cherubs out at the curb, when the person who had just parked leapt back into his car and pulled away.

He had no handicapped placard, as we did. We all laughed because we could tell this guy's thinking, "What're the chances of someone who's handicapped coming up before I get my take away dinner from Vince's? Er....pretty high, I guess." Hopefully, the episode taught him a lesson: you can't figure the chances so just don't park where you don't belong!

In today's episode, OSM wants to go to Ikea. We plan to go late in the afternoon, when the crowds have thinned. I'm planning on having Swedish meatballs for supper. :) I had hoped to get in an hour or two surveying in SWG, but my unsainted husband (Sheepy) has usurped the account and is getting bludgeoned or something.

Our sainted mother is resting, after a couple of hours at the mall. Nice thing about the mall is the free wheelchairs. We had to get one because our sainted mother (OSM) can't walk very far or for very long. She'd stop, I'd race ahead with the boys then race back to where we'd parked her, only to find her sitting down closer to where we were than where we'd left her.

At one point, I needed to race the boys entirely across the mall to Sears. OSM parked on a bench. "Stay here," I said, "Because once the boys and I are back, I can pull the car up to this door and you won't have to walk as far." "Okay," says OSM, looking tired and wan. I'm concerned, and then relieved that she can sit still and relax while I run the length of the mall with my cherubs.

The boys and I race. Chris cannot find black jeans that fit and have no logos. We all fret. We go back into the mall, ready to dash back to where we'd left OSM, but lo! She had hobbled all the way over to Sears, meaning she'd now have to hobble all the way back as there was no convenient spot near for me to pull up with the car. Dratted OSM :) I park her on another bench, and the boys stay with her ("Make sure she stays PUT this time!") then I sprint the length of the mall and locate the wheelchair sign out desk. The mall is being remodeled so it, like OSM, is not where I expect to find it. But we got it together, wheeled her around rather speedily, and ended up not finding any jeans anyway after all that.

I did however buy Curses for Chris' birthday, which is tomorrow. He likes Munchkin, so I'm hoping he'll like this one as well.

In a few, we're going to head out again, just me and OSM, to find yarn. I took her to the biggest craft store in the area and she had to stop five times before we got to the yarn aisle. I'm not sure how I'm going to get her to the back of the store this go either. Too bad I didn't have the boys bring their skateboards; then we might have propped OSM onto one of them and I could have pulled her along. Maybe next time.

Tomorrow is a busy day. I took it off (without pay; I haven't any vacation time yet) so I can clean the house. This place has developed into a science project during the school term. And, if I am constantly going to be working 12 hour days, I'm going to need to pretty it up some so that when I finally come home to collapse, I can collapse in comfort.

That is one nice thing about living alone; when you put stuff someplace, it generally stays put. So, I could do my living room up like House Beautiful and go to work, then come home and sit on the couch, admiring the view. Living with someone else (ie, a MAN!) means you have piles of interesting new objects in the living room that, as Rob likes to say, mess with my "fanged schwaa" :) Currently I have a rolling tool box beside the pinball machine, plus piles of newspapers (abandoned wherever I happened to read them last), school books, magazines and some dishes in the living room. Mind you, it's not all male clutter, some of it is obviously mine. Still, I do not like my living room right now. I haven't watched Tivo in a while, at least 2 weeks, because I don't feel comfortable in that room.

I need a maid :) And by jingo, I'm going to hire one because it sucks to come home from work on route to my other work in the little game, or worse from school late at night, and not want to sit in my own living room on my own couch to watch Tivo on the big screen TV while admiring my self-made colossus. By jingo. :)

But what about your beloved spouse, you ask? We have different tolerance levels for things and I reach my clutter/cleanliness limit much sooner than he does. I suppose his outlook is more practical, but I like a tidy room.

Yesterday at work, I started off trying to locate a box of records in our store room. Moving the boxes around, I found some supplies which I decided should be put with the other supplies, but moving them into the current supply cabinet meant cleaning that up and arranging it as well -- so I did. One of our young and studly attorneys came over to get some sticky notes and commented, "Whoa! We should take a picture of that!" and I said, "Yes, because it's not likely to stay this neat after today!" Then I opened up a drawer to put something away and realized the entire drawer was a mess...and I shut the drawer and backed away. So long as I don't have to go into that drawer, it can stay messy. In the end, I never did find the box I needed but our storage room and cabinet sure look great!

That's my practicality. :) Since I have to go into my living room, I want it tidy.

My glamorous legal career is off to a good start. I got into the office at 7AM and left at 6:45PM. Tomorrow looks like it will be the same way.

Meanwhile, my mother has expected me to make hotel reservations for friends of hers (after my sister charitably explained to our sainted mother that if there's already me, Rob and two cherubs plus my mother in a 3 bedroom condo, there really isn't room for two more adults). But I have not because I don't have time to look at what hotels are nearby to ensure that they're clean and I can't call these people because I don't get home from work till after they're in bed. I feel irked because this is why the gods invented the internet, so people on one coast can look up their own damn hotels on the opposite coast, and I wish I had the time to get it done during the day but I don't.

Guilt has done me in, I went ahead and booked a room for them for two nights; they can decide where to stay after the weekend. I had to front the payment on my credit card, so I hope they aren't going to express surprise that I made the choice without consulting them. I also hope they promptly remit their bills as I am just coming off unemployment.

I haven't taken lunch yet this week. The most I've done is run to the bathroom and run down to the lobby to buy something which I bring back to my desk and eat while working.

Remind me again why I wanted to be a paralegal? :/

Just a quickie before I head off to work -- for lo! I am employed once again. The law firm where I did my internship hired me full-time, starting yesterday and today I start working overtime. Already.

I checked my final grade in Accounting. He only deducted 20 points from the 120 the final project was worth, which means I got a solid A. It seems rather odd, as I stressed so much over that stupid stupid project. If I'd had one more week to work only on that rather than that and all the other homework, I'd have enjoyed doing it, in a sick and twisted way. :) If I needed more fluff classes, I'd consider the next accounting class, which is all in Excel.

But I only need math and science, so math and science it is.

Rob and I went to Victoria this past weekend and had a very nice time. We walked for miles, I dragged him through an artists' street market, we watched the sunset over the Inner Harbour, and he only tried to push me into the water three or four times. He noted that I couldn't push him because he was holding my hand and if I tried anything, he'd yank me into the drink with him.

How romantic :)

In the end, I didn't finish my accounting project. There's nothing but a very hollow feeling. I've never not finished an assignment before, but I could not face looking at those forms and reports any longer. I did what I could, explained to the instructor that I'd like to remain married thankyouverymuch, and turned it in.

But it doesn't feel right. I know I've passed the class, but I don't know how this will affect my grade. It's certainly affected my spirit; I feel drained. There is no joy even in knowing that it's over.

I recall when I used to have bad days at work, I would go into the big game to kill some hobgoblins. Nothing like a good slaying frenzy to clear the mind! I may do that, although I'll likely wallow in SWG. I'm finding the process of surveying quite interesting and I've dug up all kinds of things. My hunting technique is not very stylish though. I start shooting and run backwards from my target, hoping to not run into anything bigger than what's chasing me at the moment. Fortunately, running backwards into gullies doesn't make you trip and fall.

Things have come to a pretty sad state when I used my accounting spreadsheet with my grades in it to figure out what's the minimum score I'll need on my final project in order to get a 3.0, or "B."

I need to score 30.9 points. Anything above that will obviously increase my grade point average and therefore boost my GPA.

I've finished all the other accounting homework and am halfway through the final project. My brain hurts. Mrs. Beth sent me an email yesterday and I misinterpreted one of her sentences launching into a frenzied wailing and boo-hooing, only to realize after I'd responded in anguish that, er, no, she didn't mean it the way I originally read it. Fortunately, she's a bright lass and knew I'd cooked some of my brain cells.

Oh, and the dead thing under my desk wasn't a dead thing (or Rob's socks) after all. Turns out it was something in the dishwasher, which is in the kitchen near my desk and the scent was wafting out, directly at me. Peeee-UUUUUUUUUU! :)

Spent some time dodging the final project by choosing an XPS for myself, went over all the options with Rob to see whether I could get one that's better than his (hehehe) but apparently not...yet. I'm afraid to put the SWG onto my computer though, for I fear that I don't have enough oomph in my whatsis to support the cool graphics and all.

I owe my paralegal instructor webpages for the student website. "Hahaha!" you say, "Tracy doing a webpage?! She can't even finish linking her own damn archives to her blog!" And you're right! But, once accounting is over I hope to spend some time doing things with FrontPage. I also owe things to the little game that time and accounting have kept me from completing. School doesn't restart till late September, and I will have one online class and one class on campus. I'm taking Intro to Computer Science as my last science credit. I hope I like it. At least, I'm kind of interested in computers. :)

Something apparently has crawled under my desk and died. It smells awful but I don't have time to pull everything out to look for it. Most unfortunate. :(

This weekend:

Take home quiz.
Take home final exam.
Chapter 13 homework.
Chapter 14 homework.
Accounting project (one month's work putting together the books for a make-believe company).

And then....it'll be over. Done. Finis. By the end of two more quarters, I will have two two-year degrees -- an Associate of Applied Science (includes the paralegal certificate) that I'm getting this month, and then a transferable-to-a-four-year university Associate of Arts in March.

How come two two-year degrees aren't equal to one four-year degree? Hmm?

Another paralegal at the firm I'm interning at got fired. He apparently had some words with his boss and his boss's words were, "You're fired." I spent yesterday moving from the reception desk to the fired paralegal's desk, catching up the stuff he didn't do before he left, and panicking quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) all day long that I wasn't getting everything done.

There's a variety of work ethics in the world. When I was laid off last year, I ran around labeling all the file cabinets so folks would know what to ship to New York and what had to go to San Francisco. I packed all the monthly bills and sent them to my counterpart in NY with notes on what was where. I sent an email to the attorney for whom I was tracking records to explain where the records were and what they looked like so he could send someone to Seattle to get them. Before the fired paralegal left, I asked him, "What needs to get done on your desk?" and he shrugged, "Who cares? Better you than me." No wonder he's going onto unemployment at the same time that I'm coming off it, huh?

I am avoiding my accounting homework. :/

Yesterday I waded into it and nearly drown. After working on it for eight hours, my debits do not equal my credits and I cannot figure out where the mistake is. I have one more chapter's worth of homework to do and I'm still not done with the other chapter.

So then I sat down and did (what else) a spreadsheet of what grades I have thus far and ran some 'what if' scenarios for the remaining two weeks of class. If I get half credit for these two chapters that are due tomorrow, do terrible on the next two exams and miss a couple of questions on the remaining 4 quizzes, I would receive 2.9, or a "B." This is actually a respectable grade but I am so worried about it. I can get, even messing up this weekend's homework, at least a 3.8, provided I ace the remaining exams, quizzes and homework assignments. In every other class I have gotten A's, but accounting, which is so math-like, is proving to be a real challenge.

And the odd thing is, I like the class for the most part, even if there are aspects of the instructor that work my nerves. Rob was horrified when he married me that I kept my finances in a spreadsheet of my own devising so that over an entire year, I knew exactly where my money was going and how much out of each paycheck needed to be reserved for forthcoming bills. Because finances were the last straw between my ex-husband and me, I needed the security of knowing that every bill would be paid for in cash and that any luxury might still be possible if I planned for it in advance. Using that spreadsheet kept me going over several years and I was able to project things like now and again taking the boys to Cirque du Soleil, the Mariners or the symphony. We may not have lived like millionaires, but everything we had I could afford, and more importantly to me, pay cash for. Given that, I thought accounting would be easier for me, but it's not.

On the bright side, now I know what all those columns are supposed to be for in those green page ledger books. I've always wondered. :)