Well, I suppose just with the knitting. I finished my Lintilla scarf, and it turned out so pretty !

I had plenty of yarn, no issues there. I am glad to have used up an entire skein of such fun yarn on two of my absolute favorite scarves. I cast on for another right away, out of Marja’s yarn. She should have one of her very own!

Other than that, things have been so nutty around here that the idea of a holiday, or that I even have vacation at the end of the week, have receded so far into the background I’ve completely forgotten.

On Monday afternoon I found out that me and my grant submission team were going to be asked to do the impossible. Basically, pull together the equivalent of 7 grants, with foreign contracts, by 5 p.m. on Tuesday having absolutely no information on these grants whatsoever until Tuesday morning. It was truly an impossible task. But, I arrived, along with two of my team, at work at 6:30 am. We began the work, and as the rest of the team trickled in, they all began working on tasks I gave them. We all knew by 10:30 it wasn’t going to happen, but we had to work on it until 5. The entire team TRULY put in their best work, but after 3 p.m. we still had not received all of the documents we needed for it. It was….futile, irritating, and exhausting. And, really, never should have been agreed to in the first place.

I got home that night and Miss Butterfly said “Mom, I was sick at school, but I didn’t let anyone call you because I knew what a terrible day you had.” Sweet kind child that she is. She spent the rest of the evening sleeping and puking. We were up in the middle of the night for 3 hours. Then I had a doctors appointment for her this morning at 9. I’d let my team know I’d be out but that if there were any repercussions from the grant fiasco the day before, I wanted to come in and be there for them. So they had to let me know. As I was driving Miss Butterfly home, I got a text saying that the guy who wanted to submit the grant was still trying to get us to do it, despite the fact the deadline was over. And alternating between accusing us of not doing our jobs and pleading with us to still submit. I told them I’d be in as soon as I could.

I dropped Butterfly off at home, changed my shirt to something work appropriate, and headed into work. Took one look at the email we’d been sent, marched myself up to the chair’s office and defended my team, and reminded them that it’s our department and our people whose reputation is on that grant and that we have no business submitting it late, or in the condition that it’s in.

I went back to my desk without resolution, but knowing my arguments were strong. Only to get a text from Butterfly basically saying she’s now got a fever in addition to the puking and could I please come home now please? She’ll allow me one day away, but losing mom two days in a row to a person who doesn’t deserve mom’s time and attention was too much for her, so I began to make preparations to head home. It took slightly longer than I thought, but before I left I got the call that our chair was supporting our decision to not have the grant submitted, and furthermore, he didn’t even want us speaking to the person making this request of us, he wanted that person to be directed directly to the chair’s office, full stop. I filled my team in on this, and was grateful to have gotten the phone call so that I could go home and spend time with Butterfly without the anxiety of not knowing what would happen next.

Miss Butterfly finally napped. I finally napped. I finally ate! I hadn’t even managed breakfast yet, and it was well past noon. Definitely not a recommended couple of days to experience around the holiday season and I am so grateful it’s over.

We have one of the last two pre christmas holiday parties tonight. Not sure if we’ll make it or not, it’ll depend on Miss Butterfly. She gets to choose if we go, if she stays alone, or if she goes to dads, or if she just needs mom. All options valid.

That’s us for now! Hopefully more fun stuff soon, but the past couple days haven’t been that fun. Talk about putting a cramp on already behind christmas plans!!!