To my dear sweet Mama, Kowpatty! Ya'll stop by and wish her a good one. She's a great mom, and all six of her kiddos and our spouses and kids love her to pieces.

Happy birthday, Mom. You are not only my mother, but my friend. Love you!!!

STRESS IS REAL!!!

I'm not sure exactly how this works, but it is amazingly accurate.

Read the full description before looking at the picture.

The picture below has 2 identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary's Hospital.

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical, a person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins.    The more differences a person finds between the dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing.

Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you may want to take a vacation.

Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

Too bad I don't know how to take that advice myself. I really do need a vacation. I don't have much time for Xanga of late. Too many things going on in life. I haven't been taking my blood sugar for a couple of months. I went to take it last week when I was feeling out of whack and discovered the battery in my glucometer was dead. So no blood sugar until I got that replaced. John remembered to bring home a spare battery last night (they are the same kind many computers take) and I tested my sugar this morning at 259!!! YIKES!!!! I really don't want to have to get back on the meds cause they really mess with me. I'm having such a hard time dealing with diet and exercise, but I know if I don't figure out how to live with this I WILL die from it. It's very sad.

I'm depressed lately because of so much going on in my life. I haven't had a day off from work, except Sunday, in three months and it's starting to get to me. We are short-handed and I'm still behind, though starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I'll probably get cleared just in time for out trip to Texas in a couple of months, just in time to get behind again. Ha!

We did hire a housekeeper to help us out. He comes every couple of weeks and charges me $40 a pop. I wouldn't mind so bad if he'd actually clean things. We'll have to have a talk with him about it this next time. Last time he spent 1 1/2 hours there. When we got home, the toilet hadn't been cleaned, the bathroom mirror hadn't been cleaned, there was a cat hairball under one of the tables (dry, so I know it wasn't since he quit) and the back of the sink hadn't been wiped, among other things. I know my house is a pretty big mess and it's going to take a while. I don't mind paying the $40 if he's going to actually get it clean, and I wouldn't mind if it was 1 1/2 hours IF he actually had gotten there. When he talked me into this flat rate, I figured it was worth it because of all the deep cleaning that needs to be done to get it up to where it will be a routine thing.

That, on top of wedding drama, on top of work crap, on top of never getting a day off and worrying about my health, is really getting to me.

So, forgive me if I'm not going to manage to make weekly posts. I have to figure out a way to exercise, and I think yard work might be one way to get me active again. I'd like to buy Hubby and I bicycles and go riding, too, but after just buying a new lawnmower, I think that's going to have to wait. Maybe I can find some at a yard sale or something, but then I'd have to manage to take off work to go yard saling. That's something both Hubby and I enjoy, too, and something we could do together if we could only manage to get away from work long enough to do it. I don't necessarily consider Sundays a day off because I spend so much time in church. I do manage to catch a nap on Sundays, though, so that's good.

I'm totally rambling now, so I'm outta here.

Lots of stuff has been happening in the past couple of weeks. This past week, I got a summons to serve jury duty. I have been a registered voter since I turned 18, and I was called one other time to serve jury duty over 20 years ago. At that time, I had already moved out of the county I was called to serve in, so I couldn't serve. In Iowa, we must serve for a 2-month period. I have to call every Monday to see if there is a trial scheduled that week. If there is, I have to report to jury duty every Tuesday morning. I may or may not get called to serve on the jury of that trial. I may not have to sit through any cases at all; or I may have to serve on more than one.

The day after I found out I had to serve on jury duty during the months of May and April (which I consider a civic duty to support the American justice system), my son and his girlfriend called to tell me they are getting married this summer. Problem is, they want their wedding date to be in June, which we cannot make, and they are trying to plan it for the day after my oldest daugther's due date. I tried to explain to them that schedule during that time may end up having other events overshadow their special day.

Then, it turns out that one of my employees has a beef with a guy who supposedly didn't pay him for some work he did before we hired him. They guy turns out to be a member of the church I just joined. Apparently the guy has over 200 small claims cases, mostly where he has sued someone else. I need some help with some scripture that talks about suing fellow believers. I know there is some, and I've found, with the help of my son-in-law, Corinthians 6:1-8; and Matthew 5:39-41. Does anyone know of any others?

Still swamped at work, and short-handed. Will check in when I can.

Working on the bookwork for taxes - STILL!!! I'm at the point where I think we are going to have to file our personal taxes this week and then file an amended return later. We have worked many many long days/nights on this, including last Wed-Sat. I did spend a lot of Friday working on a newsletter for a non-profit, but then Friday night was stayed until 9:45 p.m. working on the books. There are a LOT of double entries from the point-of-sale program we started using last year. I don't think I'm seeing a light at the end of the tunnel yet, but I'm also realistic that even if I got these to the accountant today (which isn't going to happen), Schedule K's would still not be done in time for the shareholders to file on time. I will have to call or e-mail them today to suggest they either file an extension themselves, or file their taxes for their regular income now and do an amended return later. We'll not slow down the pace on the books, but we've got regular jobs we have to do during the day today and tomorrow. I've got two newsletters to do this week, plus normal bookkeeping. I didn't make it to the bank on Friday because we were so focused on fixing the problems in last-year's books. I MUST get to the bank today.

I'll probably not see you for the rest of the week again. Just too busy this week to allow Xanga to eat up my time. I love visiting you all, but the time isn't there for me to do so right now.

Oh, while I'm on here though, I did have a wonderful Easter Sunday, and hope you all did, too. We had a great Open Tomb Celebration at church that started with a breakfast at 8:30 a.m. My friend who doesn't get out much was planning on comin to church with me to listen to the cantata, and I was able to talk her into coming to the breakfast at the last minute, even though she hadn't slept well the night before. The choir did a wonderful job on the cantata, and I did come forward during the invitation and submit my request to join this church. A few of the deacons and their wives took me into a conference room and heard my testimony. I was surprised at how much I cried during it. My friend took me to lunch and paid because I couldn't find my purse that morning. I finally gave up looking for it because I didn't want to miss church. I did find it later in the afternoon. She was going to have me drop her off at home because she was tired, but ended up going with me to county care (the county-run nursing home) to sing hymns with the residents. It was fun. Everyone was in good spirits. My friend's brother lives out there, but we found out he had been taken to the hospital after having several seizures in the past 24-hours. After county care, we went to the hospital to visit. He didn't seem to know her at first, but we talked with him and sang some hymns with him. He loves "Jesus Loves Me" and whenever we are singing at county care, he asks us to sing that more than once during our hour there. So she and I sang it for him and his face just lit up as we did. We said the Lord's Prayer with him before we left, and he had a smile on his face when we did. I was happy to be a part of bringing that smile to his face. I dropped my friend off, went by the office to see if I had left my purse there (and I had), came home to rest about half an hour before starting laundry and supper. I was worn out, but it was a good wearing out.

OK, now I have to get my butt up to work and get started on all the "fun" that awaits me there.

Apparently that old March adage, "In like a lion, out like a lamb," isn't going to hold true this year. We started much with heavy winter storms that broke our trees and dumped more snow on us in two days than we'd totaled all winter. That left many of us with hope that spring was soon around the corner, and it did pop it's lovely head up for about a week.

However, March seems to also be exiting like a lion as well. The national weather map looks like practically the entire United States is getting rain. We had a pretty hard thunderstorm go through this morning, and it's predicted to be this way the rest of today and tomorrow, too. Other parts of the country are getting hit hard with severe weather, including tornadoes.

I'll be huddled up inside at my computer all weekend, trying to finish cleaning up the messes in the books, unless we lose power. I pray we don't lose power. I really need to get this done so all six of my shareholders don't have to file for extensions. I'm cutting it pretty close to the line anyway. If I weren't one of the owners, I'd probably have been fired. Not that a board of directors can't fire an owner from a company. It happened to Steve Jobs from Apple many years ago. They brought him back later, and he turned the company around with the iPod, but still...

A gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:1

I am still among the living, just extremely busy trying to meet a 2nd deadline when I've missed the first already. No time to post much, just wanted to let everyone know I'm ok. The verse above is my phrase to live by at the moment. I believe it will become one of my favorite passages.

Your Worry Factor is 78%

The amount you worry is definitely borderline unhealthy. Even when things are going well, you find yourself fixating on the negatives. Try to remember the times you've been able to let your worries go. If you can do that again, you'll be much happier!

That's me - always worrying. Can't sleep at night 'cause I'm worrying about something that didn't get done during the day and afraid I'll run out of time to do it tomorrow, too.

Today was a good day. While the turnout was about half of what we wanted at the Spring Omelet Breakfast, the omelets were delicious, the fruit cup was super yummy and the speaker was good. We came close to breaking even because the Ruritans (who were making the breakfast itself) did not charge us for the 50 omelets they said they needed. They actually made a little money; the historical society may have gone in the red just a little with the advertising. But, we came pretty close to splitting the take evenly, so we're happy about it for a first try.

After the breakfast, I went back to the office. My plan was to work on the end-of-year books that still aren't completely cleaned up and get the reports/resolutions printed for the shareholders/board meeting tomorrow afternoon. I discovered that while I was gone yesterday (I left early to set up for the breakfast), hubby took in a print job from a guy who is ALWAYS having a print crisis. Everything he wants done needs done right away, according to him, but he'll wait for a week to pick it up once it's finished and usually longer than that to pay for it. I thought I cut this guy loose a couple of years ago, but hubby thought he was doing a good thing by collecting cash from the guy in advance. I had less than 24 hours to put together his print job and get it completed. I did tell him that next time he needs me to do something with less than 2 BUSINESS days lead time, I'm going to charge him double. We'll see if that gets him to planning things out a little better.

I did manage to get everything ready for the meeting tomorrow (except the tax stuff that was supposed to be done a couple days ago). All of hubby's financial reports are in there (he keeps a current "cash on hand vs. liabilities" report all the time) and his projections for this coming year put together. Hubby copy those into final packets in the morning while I'm at church. I don't like having the meeting on a Sunday afternoon, but so many of our folks work Saturdays that it's really the most convenient time to get all of them together.

I have chopped up all the ingredients for the salad I'm taking to the church "carry-in dinner" tomorrow. I'll attend Sunday school and church in the morning, stick around for the dinner, then head to work for the annual meeting. I am feeling like things are in place for tomorrow. I'll just have to answer for having to file an extension on the taxes, and hope all of them understand why they haven't already gotten their Schedule K's (shareholders tax statements).

After the meeting, John and I are planning on going to see "Wild Hogs" at the movie theater. It looks funny and we could use some couple's time.