Sheep Guarding Llama

I got up this morning and went straight into the “office” to work.  I have just tons and tons to do and no spare time.  I am being very productive.

My entire day was spent in the office.  So much work to do.  The family all went out for an afternoon family event so Oreo and I were home alone for a while which was really good since it gave us some time to relax and really focus on work.  As long as everyone is home I am stuck getting interrupted every few minutes.  And I really mean every few minutes – I am really lucky if I ever get a ten minute stretch in which to really focus on something.

I was at least incredibly efficient this afternoon.  I was alone for several hours and actually did manage to mostly get caught up.  I worked the entire day even after everyone returned home.  I worked until about one in the morning.  This is one of my busiest work days in a very long time.  I easily worked sixteen to eighteen hours without break today.  I even ate all of my meals sitting at my desk.

I feel better, though, getting some of this backlog of work knocked out.  This will make this week a bit better.

Liesl had another tough night last night.  Not as bad as the last few nights but definitely not good.  Francesca had something wrong with her eye this morning so they all planned a trip to the clinic together.  Dominica, Francesca and Liesl headed off to CareNow early before I was even really up.  Madeline, Emily and I took care of Garrett and Clara.

This is a really busy work weekend for me.  I am heavily backlogged on stuff that really needs my attention so I am trapped in the office for pretty much all of it, which is no fun.

Liesl turns out to have a very minor ear infection.  We are pretty sure that she had Clara’s virus last week and with the extra sinus action that she saw that it turned into an ear infection.  Fortunately we caught it really early.  Unfortunately we don’t have sick visits covered on her insurance so that little visit cost $189 while we are really, really tight on funds (still no word on whether or not I am likely to be getting paid anytime soon.)

This afternoon Dominica, Francesca and Emily went out for what they thought would be a quick trip to Walmart for groceries and medicine.  That ended up taking a few hours which they were not happy about.  Madeline and I stayed home to watch the little ones.

I did manage to get lots and lots of work done today, it was quite productive.  I did not get very much time to spend with the family, however, which sucks.  This weekend is going to be a pure work weekend for me even with everyone visiting.

I did manage to get a Fedora 14 development box built for Emily running in VirtualBox on Francesca’s laptop that she can use for learning Python programming.

I worked until everyone went to bed then went to bed myself.  Remember that tonight is daylight savings time.

Overall Liesl is clearly feeling much, much better today.  Not one hundred percent but she is happy and playing and isn’t all stuffy.  She was so much better today, in fact, that tonight she is sleeping in her own bed again for the first time in several days.  She was very excited to get to go to bed in her own bed.  At most she likes to sleep with us maybe once every fortnight.  Maybe even less frequent.

Liesl got much better sleep last night than she has for the last few nights.  Hopefully that extra sleep means that she is on the road to recovery.  Her sleeping means that Dominica and I slept much better last night as well.

I had to get up a little early this morning as I had a conference call an hour before I normally start working.  Today is going to be a very long day at the office.

The day ended up being absolutely crazy.  I had to skip lunch and work straight through just trying to keep up.  At two thirty I finally had a chance to run to Rockfish and get take out which I then ate at my desk while I continued to work.

I was in the office until around eight this evening.  What a long day.  Then I drove Nicki home and headed to the gas station to fuel up and then off to home.

Once I got home we had about an hour and a half before the Grices would arrive so it was a mad cleaning frenzy as we attempted to do all of the things that Dominica was unable to do by herself.  Mostly this was moving furniture, storing a ton of boxes and bins behind the bar and getting beds set up.

It was nearly ten when the Grices arrived.  We got them unpacked the Francesca and I ran over to Jack in the Box to pick up dinner for everyone.

Shortly after eating, everyone was off to bed.  Liesl is definitely seeming some better tonight.  Fingers crossed that she will be better tomorrow.

Finally, around six this morning, Liesl actually fell asleep and she and Dominica were able to sleep in kind of late – like until around ten.  So they actually got some sleep.  I got up and went in to work without waking them up.  Even Oreo was still buried in blankets, snuggled in between them when I left.

So my paycheck didn’t come again today.  Normally it comes on Tuesday.  But sometimes not until Wednesday.  We didn’t really panic until it didn’t arrive today.  We already knew from two weeks ago that there were issues with my paycheck and that we were only going to get half pay this week and, if all goes well, it will get made up in the next check.  But the bulk of the time needed to get the accounting fixed for the next pay check has been burned up and there is little or no progress so I am down to just a few days yet before the accounting disaster causes me to not get paid for another two weeks making the total, as it seems, push out to a total of six weeks without pay.  A month and a half is a long time for a single income family to go without seeing a paycheck – especially when we have two mortgages to pay since we can’t sell the house in New York.

We confirmed that no money is coming for another two weeks.  This is going to be a tough month for sure.  Fortunately the bills are paid and nothing is really due until the very end of the month so it is just the interim liquid funds that are really an issue.  Not the end of the world, just extra stress and stuff that I have to follow up on or else it gets missed and months would go by before anyone noticed.

So we had to do some monetary maneuvering today.  Dominica finds this stuff incredibly stressful.  It’s really not as bad as it sounds.  The past year has been really tough and we are not where we should be with our finances but certainly sounds far more bleak than it is in reality.

When I got home Liesl was sleeping on Dominica’s lap in the living room.  She had not managed to take a nap today and this is the first sleep that she was getting.  Even asleep you can really see how sick she is.  Poor little girl.

Liesl did not sleep for too long.  I barely had time to feed Oreo and warm up dinner for myself, but not get to eat it, before she woke up.  We spent most of the evening with Liesl sitting on my lap on the couch in our bedroom.  She is still very sick but seems, to me at least, to have improved since yesterday.

Her fever continues to go up and down.  For a little while she will be fine then she will be awful again for a few hours.

Off to bed early tonight.  Hopefully a good night of sleep will get Liesl over the hump.  The Grices come tomorrow evening for almost a week.  They will be here from tomorrow evening until Wednesday.  Then I head off to Maryland on Friday evening, one week from tomorrow.  The new office carpeting comes in on that Saturday.  It is a busy week ahead of us.