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.

When I was 13 years old, I worked as a mother's helper for a Jewish family down the block from us. I babysat like crazy in the 8th-10th grades, and made pretty good money at it, too. This lady asked me if I'd like to be a mother's helper, explaining that it included babysitting but also helping her around the house. It meant working for her after school a few days a week, and babysitting most Saturdays while they went to Synagogue.

It was loads of fun for me at the time and VERY educational. I love learning about other cultures and she did not mind at all explaining to my young mind many of the histories behind their traditions. I helped her clean out her kitchen in preparation of Passover. She moved everything non-perishable into a shed outside, and everything that would spoil during that time went into the trash. Anything at all that had any kind of leavening agent in it had to be removed from the house and every surface where that might have touched needed to be scrubbed down. While we worked, she explained to me that Jews did this to remember their ancestors' time in the desert of Egypt where God fed them with manna. I remembered the story of the Exodus from Sunday school, but it was so much more real hearing it from someone who still witnessed it.

She also explained the Teffilins inside each door frame were little prayer boxes that had scriptures in them for protection and as reminders of their faith when they went in and out of those doors. She invited me for Sabbath dinner, too, and explained their prayers and traditions of that to me as well.

I was an ambitious babysitter, often cleaning people's houses for them, or doing the dishes, etc., while they were out. I got an eduction in Kosher after I did her dishes for her in the bare sink instead of using the proper dish basin, ruining those dishes for what they were intended. I offered to pay for them, but she was very nice about it and said she could purify them and they could become part of another set of dishes that did not touch either meat or dairy.

Her son's name was David, and she explained to me that in Hebrew, it was pronounced Dah-veed. I loved saying his name that way. I sometimes wonder what ever happened to them. Whenver we are approaching Easter, and subsequently Passover, I wonder if they have any idea what an impact they had on my life because of their generosity and willingness to explain their faith to me.

My mom called me about half an hour ago to let me know that Ann's baby has arrived. Miss Chonda Lilly arrived at 2:58 p.m. weighing in at 6 lbs-14oz. She's 20 inches long and I could hear her crying so sweetly in the background. Welcome my newest niece. You can congratulate Ann on her site, but she'll be in the hospital a few days.

What a weekend!!! It was full of a lot of good points, highlighted with a couple of bad things.

Today is my father-in-law's birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD), but we are both busy all day and we both have an historical society board meeting tonight, and because I'm not dining out during Lent, I made them dinner at my house Saturday. I went shopping for the ingredients Friday afternoon and made the soup that same night. I had every intention of taking off work Saturday as soon as the store closed at 2:30, giving me plenty of time to clean up the house a little and prepare the rest of the dinner. Someone came in wanting a cell phone shortly after 2:00 and while he was helped by the employee who was working Saturday, the employee has the gift of gab and this was one day I was wanting to tell him to SHUT UP because I had places to go. I needed to count his drawer down, so it was about 3:30 by the time I got out of there. While I did run around like a busy bee, I did a fairly good job of maintaining my calm (something I do not do well under pressure) by continuallly telling myself that I had done a good job of prep work and as long as I kept at a steady pace, we would be ok. Dinner was supposed to be served at 6:30 and I was running just a little behind. Dad called at 5:30 to tell me that the car wash where he worked had over 100 cars go through that day and they might be about half an hour late. PERFECT FOR ME, just the amount of time I estimated I was running behind. They showed up a few minutes before 7 p.m., by which time I had everything prepared and in the fridge just waiting to be served or cooked at it's appointed time. The dining room was lit up with a bunch of candles and I was very proud of the ambiance. I offered them each a glass of wine as I popped the appetizers into the oven. We enjoyed each other's company over the next two hours as we had a five-course meal served a little "ghetto" as I do not have enough dinner plates to cover that many courses. So, I had regular dinner plates on the table, on which I served most of our courses on plastic disposable dinnerware (saved on the amount of dishes I had to do as well).

Our menu consisted of:

• Pigs in a blanket (Cocktail sausages wrapped in Crescent Roll dough)
• Chinese Noodle Salad (mmmm, good. I'll have to post it sometime)
• Homemade meatball soup (I cheated and used frozen meatballs, but the rest was homemade)
• Orange sherbet for a palate cleanser
• London broils (tenderloin beef wrapped in bacon) and corn-on-the-cob
• Mango Strawberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream

It went over well. Dad said he needs to have birthdays more often. The folks left the house about 10:00 and I took a couple Tylenol PM and went to bed about 11:30. When I calculated whether I had enough time to sleep the pills off, I forgot to figure in the change for Daylight Savings Time, so when my alarm went off at 7:30 in the morning, it was really only 6:30 to my body and I could not make myself wake up. I ended up missing Sunday school because I couldn't talk myself awake early enough. I literally was laying there telling myself "You have to get up, Debbie, you have to get up."

Church was great and I managed to catch a short nap afterwards before heading out to the monthly sing-along at the assisted living facility. This is always fun. I've been going the second Sunday of the month for years now and many of the residents and I know each other on a first name basis. Many of the folks that come down are younger people (in there 40s or 50s) who are a mildly mentally challenged. One of the ladies always brings cookies and candies for a snack. She's been bringing small cans of soda for a few months now and attendance has boomed since she started bringing those. Yesterday we had one guy there who would just sing out as loud as he could. He called out all kinds of hymns, but especially wanted to sing "Jesus Loves Me". The other residents were getting annoyed at him and would yell, "We already sang that one," every time he would ask. The funniest thing about this guy, though, was that it didn't matter that he didn't know the words. He would sing the words he did know and make up the rest. It was so cute. He just loved singing for Jesus.

On the way home from County Care, I called my elderly friend Barb, who had left me a message earlier that day that she couldn't go to county care because she had not been feeling well for a few days and was running a fever. When I asked her if she was feeling any better, she told me that she was still feverish and her urine was red. That raised HUGE flags and I told her she needed to go to the hospital. She argued with me a little, so I told her I was going to call her power of attorney and see what she said. The POA wasn't available (turns out she had her cell phone off while she was attending a concert at her church that afternoon), so I went by my friend's house to check on her, even though she kept telling me she didn't want me to get what she had. Long story short, I convinced her to let me take her to the emergency room, where I spent five hours while they poked her and tested her and x-rayed her, and finally admitted her. She has a severe infection, either kidney, bladder or urinary tract, but the way she was wincing when they poked on her side last night, probably kidney. She was also pretty dehydrated. I wanted to stay with her until they either admitted her or sent her home. She kept worrying about being such a bother, and I kept insisting she was worth it. Her POA got the message and came by the hospital as they were getting her settled into a room. I was SOOOOO thankful for her to be there. She showed up at just the time she was really needed because that's when they started asking all kinds of in-depth medical questions I had no idea about. We prayed a little and I left as they were bringing my friend a Healthy Choice dinner.

By the time I got home at 8:45, John had eaten what was left over from the salad, but he still had room for soup when I heated it up. I have one bowl of it left that I think I'll take over to my friend's house if she gets out of the hospital today (which we are both hoping she will). I did not manage to get any laundry done yesterday at all. I usually manage to get all of my laundry done on Sunday afternoons in between naps and movie watching. I will just have to throw a load in a night this week and hopefully stay ahead of our needs. I don't usually like doing it during the week because I have a bad habit of forgetting it and either end up with very wrinkled clothes or, worse yet, soured clothes from sitting wet in the washer.

I need to get ready for work. I HATE the time changes.

Last night was a rough night. I went to bed at 9 p.m. after dozing off in front of House many times. Hubby says to me, "You know if you wouldn't get up so early you wouldn't have that problem." Ugh! I know. There are not enough hours in the day. Last night I could not shut my mind off. I woke up the first time about 11:30 p.m., then again at 3:10 a.m., and several times in between or around there with John's snoring. The main problem was too much going through my mind. It was too late to take a Tylenol PM or I wouldn't have wanted to get up in the morning. I need at least 8 hours if I'm taking Tylenol PM or I feel groggy and can't wake myself.

It's going to be another long day. I, once again, have too many irons in the fire and more pulling for my attention. I have to learn to say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

We still have power and are still alive, in spite of last night's storm. I believe we are in for a little more snow, but not supposed to be as bad as yesterday, and for us, yesterday was not as bad as last weekend. Where we live, it started out with rain, then hail, then really wet, heavy snow, but only an inch or so of it. The problem is the wind blowing the snow back across the roads, and the drifts it's creating.

One of our customers delivers the newspaper to rural areas. He ended up in a snow drift that covered his 4-wheel drive Jeep. He was stuck there for two hours before a farmer with a tractor came and pulled him out. The rest of the people on his route are not getting their paper tonight.

North and west of here got it REALLY bad. There were blizzard conditions across the west and north half of the state. Interstate 80 west of Des Moines and Interstate 35 north of Des Moines are CLOSED. We did not open our Knoxville store today because all of my remaining employees live here in Oskaloosa and I wasn't going to have them driving in those conditions today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Still lots of people without power. Please pray for them. We did lose power at the Oskaloosa store late yesterday afternoon and closed up early because we had no computers and no machines to print airtime cards for the pre-paid cell phone users. Closed the Knoxville store early because of the weather, too. Got home from work REALLY eaerly and had power there, but it didn't last long. Went out about half an hour after getting home, then came back on 5 or 10 minutes later, but then we had no cable. We watched a DVD until just before 7 p.m. and then checked to see if cable was back on so we could watch "Survivor." It was and we did and we got to sleep in a warm bed with heat, thank you LORD!