I am a buzzing bee... buzzzz...

Let's see--I've been busy busy lately.

Yesterday I spent the whole day cleaning out my side of the closet (not even the clothes, just the storage) and my side of the bed (the floor and shelf have been such tempting storage places in the past). I bit the bullet and tossed some things I am never going to use (ugly crochet pattern for Barbie "antebellum" gowns, articles from class on prepositions of space, a plethora of amazon boxes). I downsized, reorganized, and redistributed, and now everything fits with space to spare. I even vacuumed upstairs when I was done, although it was 8 o'clock at night.

Saturday John and I drove across town and got lots of errands done while Hannah went into town with her friend and bought make-up. She got home before us, of course, because even make-up shopping can get old after an hour-and-a-half and 15 bucks worth of nail polish and lip gloss (thanks, Gwamma!). But she was perfectly cool and collected when I called from the store to tell her we were on our way home, almost 2 hours after she had gotten there herself. Recently she had told me she thought she was old enough to spend a few hours by herself in the evening if John and I wanted to go out. Our 16th anniversary is coming up in March, and we didn't get to celebrate our 15th because I was at my grandmother's funeral in Texas, so we might just have to take her up on that.

Last week I spent my evenings saving every blog entry and accompanying comments for Shannon's blog. I had saved it on my old computer (whose data has now gone bye-bye) as a series of pdfs, minus the comments, but this time I wanted to get everything, in case Blogger decides to take it down. By the time I was done, I had 674 pages in Microsoft Word. That was a mighty output for 5 years.

I thought I would be a lot more torn up reading back over her posts, which is one reason why it took me so long to start. (The way I had done it before, I was able to save a year at a time without having to go through every entry.) One thing that probably helped was this new prescription for St. John's wort, which I got just before xmas. The doc said it would help me feel a little distance from things. So far, so good. But reading back through all the entries, I was reminded of just what a wonderful person Shannon was, and how much love she had for so many people, myself included. That is something to feel good about, not sad.

Last Wednesday, we had some friends over for coffee, so the whole day was taken up with baking (me) and cleaning (John and Hannah--woo!) in the morning and visiting in the afternoon. But that meant I lost a day of translating. Today I more than made up for it. I have been aiming to get through 5 manuscript pages a day--this is for an informative brochure with lots of big pictures, so most pages are not solid text--but today I got through 11! Granted, one page with *just* a photo, but there was still a header to translate.... The next bit of text could be more challenging, since it is 3 or 4 pages of glossary to explain the medical jargon used in the brochure, but I think I have a pretty good handle on all the terms by now, 35 pages in.

And now I have to go finish up the stroganoff so we can eat.

--Nee in Germany loves dairy and mushrooms, so stroganoff is right up her alley