I came home today to find that.

My 13 year old daughter was wimpering in a pillow and blanket on our reclining chair. Her class went skiing today. She and her best friend chose to go inner tube sledding instead. They collided and my daughter got a bloody nose. That plus even though my husband check marked the form that they should send her with a box lunch from the school cafeteria, they didn't, and a friend had to lend her money.

Since my daughter's school trip bus came back later than expected, she missed her usual school bus home and had to take the "after school activities" school bus home. So my 8 year old son came home to an empty, locked house. Luckily, we're lazy and had left a back door unlocked.

My husband came home whining about recent events at work and threatening to quit! After 18 months of being laid off, he wants to quit over what I consider to be something relatively minor. I forbid it, like an angry battle ax wife from an Andy Capp cartoon. Too bad I didn't hit him with a rolling pin.

This morning I gave an approximately 1 hour presentation to 80 clients, visiting our office, regarding Resource Based Relative Value Units, RBRVS, and it's uses in our software. It went better than I expected. Then the sales department asked me if I would go to Buffalo Minnesota with them next Thursday to demonstrate proper use of our appointment scheduling product. I said yes. I love stuff like that.

About 2 weeks ago, with little warning to us, our new big boss emailed everyone a new organization chart. I was flattered to see that now my 6 closest coworkers report to me, on that chart. But disappointed to see that my own boss was re-assigned to be the manager of a team of people we all know are scheduled to be let go in September. We want her for our team, and worried what would happen to her when everyone who reports to her gets let go!

And I worred, without her doing all the bureaucratic work and all the managment meetings for our team, that would mean I'd have to do all that, and would not be available to answer all the technical questions everyone else on the team has. For the last year, 4 of them reported to me, so I was part of the leadership team, but my own boss took care of most of the management meetings, reporting, lengthy angry customer conference calls, and all that time consuming stuff, and that left me free to train new people and take over the complicated technical problems people rely on me for.

So my boss and I called the new manager with our concerns. And long story short, she created a new organization chart on which no one reports to me, we get to keep our boss on our team, and I'm listed as reporting to her, along with my six co workers and a few other people. I have mixed emotions about it since it looks like a demotion on paper, after all I am entirely removed from the row of managers, but I still get paid the same, and I think I'll be happier doing my job than being a people manager all day. And we all agreed in a brief department meeting this afternoon, that we'll all just keep doing our usual work flow, and that this basically puts us back to the way we were before this started, except this September, our annual review month, I won't do anyone's reviews. So, it's kind of good news bad news. My husband was appalled that I didn't just take the management position, for the sake of my resume. It wouldn't have paid differently, that I know of. And it would have taken me away from most of the job duties that I actually enjoy doing. Plus, honestly I don't know how I would manage that department without "me" out there, with my 9 1/2 years of experience, helping with their problems all the time.

At the meeting today, one of the attendees was a lady I used to sit next to, in 1989, at one of my first jobs right out of college, at Colon and Rectal Surgery Associates. The only co worker there that I had acually liked, and the only one with the decency to actually attend my wedding. I got to eat lunch with her and have a laugh. That was 18 years ago, and I only lasted 9 months. It was funny all the miserable details we could both still remember! And she still looks the same!

Oh, well it's 7:30, and I should go run.

I'm editing this later to say when I was out running with my dog tonight, I saw a huge shooting star fall across the sky. Its flames were so vivid, I listened for the sound of a plane crash, just in case I was mistaken! It was really beautiful and made me feel stupid for worrying about something like an org-chart or Relative Value Units.

My son's eighth birthday is tomorrow, but he had a birthday slumber party with his friends, yesterday. So we had 8 little boys sleep over last night.

They ranged in age from 5 to 11 years. 4 were a set of brothers from next door. 3 were other boys from our block who ride the school bus with my son every afternoon, and one was my husband's co worker's son.

They were all 9 (including my own son) so similar in their personalities that it was hard to tear them away from their Nintendo Game Cube and PC-Game tournaments.

We had chicken nuggest shaped like dinosaurs, pizza, and chips and cookies at bed time. And cake and ice cream at dinner of course. I made the effort to put a bowl of mixed fruit on the breakfast table this morning, along with the Life cerial and Eggo waffles, but of course no one touched the fruit. Several of the boys poured paper cups of orange juice , and then didn't drink it.

We had a Pinata after breakfast, but the rope broke pretty early on, and some remaining boys just had to take their turns clubbing it on the ground, like a baby seal.

I used the calendar on my cell phone to remind me what time to pass out which hyperactivity drugs to which boy, at which time. But I probably pretty much defeated the purpose with the snacks, and the handfulls of little candies from the pinata and in their little plastic treat bags on the way out.

We all watched the Pink Panther with Steve Martin, on blankets and sleeping bags in the living room, but after that most of the boys were still awake, and watched Sponge Bob the Movie, quietly, and my husband and I went to bed. I got up at 12:30 am just to check on them, and my son, and the son of my husband's co worker had snuck back downstairs and were playing the Game Cube. I made them turn it off and go back upstairs to bed. My son confessed to me this morning that after I went back to bed they both just went back downstairs again and liteally didn't sleep all night.

My son fell asleep in church today and hit his head against the hard wooden back of the pew in front of us, and cried all the way home.

So if you ask them, they probably think they had a good time. We happen to know most of those parents went out last night! The one set of parents who stayed home invited my 13 year old daughter to spend the night with their 13 year old daughter, one of her best friends, so she wouldn't have to stay home with all the boys, and was she ever grateful to go! But my husband wonders if his coworker will ever speak to him again, after her no-sleep son came home.

About 3 weeks ago, 2 co workers had to take a week and a half of vacation. One was secretly getting married in Hawaii, the other was her sister, and pretty much had to go with her. One of our main bosses freaked out at my boss for letting two such vital people go at once, so I said I'd take over for them, in their absence. The pressure was on, to prove we did the right thing "letting" two people with such unique responsibilities go at once. The good news is, I pretty much pulled it off. A lot of people said I did great. A few told me they preferred me! The bad news, however, is I really did work my guts out for that, and was ready for a week and a half vacation, myself, by the time we got back.

I did take Wednesday off this week. That morning I had to take my 13 year old daughter to the orthodontist, so he could check on her "expander." She doesn't have braces yet. She has a device braced to the roof of her mouth to expand her pallett, to make room for the braces to straighten her teeth. Every night I gotta put this pin-sized allen wrench in her mouth and crank it once. One more month of that, then she will wear a retainer for a while, and then get braces.

That afternoon I did something I've wanted to do for a long time. I drove to Global Market, a small shopping mall inside our old, retired Sears buildidng on Lake Street. It had rows of booths almost more like the State Fair . Each booth represented a different country or culture, and sold specialty grocery items or gifts, or was a small fast food restaurant. It wasn't truely global though. Africa, Asia and South and Central America were pretty well represented, but Europe, Australia, and North America weren't. I had some so-so Vietnamese food for lunch And I walked across the lobby to an office that houses some of my old co workers who all quit a few year ago and went, together to this new company, so it was fun to see them.

That afternoon I had to go to the Ear Nose Throat Clinc. He stuck a thin tube with a scope on it up my nose and way down the back of my throat and explained my tongue is pushed so far back that's why it's hard to breathe when I sleep. I have to sleep over at a Sleep clinic some night soon so they can monitor me again. If that proves to be the case, it sounds like my options are surgery or surgery. Surgery to pull my jaw out farther, wow, I'd have an actual chin, I would have been thrilled if I were 20 and there were some kind of point to that. Or surgery to put some kind of screws in my tongue muscles to pull them back. I'll take the drowning, I think, thanks. I guess I don't know why I'm going to this, since I don't really like the prognosis, but oh well, might as well get it put in my medical record.

It's been below 0 out, but I've been running anyway. My new clothes I bought for myself this summer got too tight, and I'm too cheap to buy new ones again. So now I'm one of those dorks wearing everything I own , running down the sidwalk, with my dog on a leash, and my MP3 player playing Body Moving by the Beastie Boys, and Original Prankster by the Offspring, while steam comes out of my mouth, from behind my scarf. Oh well, I'll be well prepared for the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure this May. I was disappointed recently to find out that's only a 5K. I thought it was 10 !

In the news. Anna Nicole Smith died this week. It's all anyone can talk about. I thought she was annoying. And some astronaut lady drove out of state to try and kill someone she thought was dating her boyfriend. I'm sure it was horrifying to her intended victim, but it's so lame I have to laugh every time I hear about it.

Also we got our new Whirlpool Dishwasher from Warner Stallion, it only took an hour for the delivery person to completely install it, no complications, it runs great , and it's so quiet! To bad our old one didn't explode in to flames earlier!