Hey Shabs!

Here's that blog post I was telling you about!  We're doing a fundraiser at work for United Way and we had a little meeting this morning to sort and price the items we're selling, but I'm back in the office now and ready to get back to work (writing a blog post to you).

First of all, I cannot thank you enough for coming to our house for Thanksgiving!  I had such a good time with you and it was so nice to have my family there.  I am so happy around all of you!  And Emma is SUCH. A. DOLL.  I don't think she could possibly be any more fun!!!  She's such a sweet and happy little girl and crazy cute too!  It was just so nice for you, Stu, Emma, mom, and dad to all be in our house.  It made me feel so good that you liked our house and our little Curly girl, too :)  Also, you all seemed so relaxed while you were here, which was so nice.  I know you and Stu both work really hard and the trip was long, but you didn't seem stressed or annoyed or anything... you seemed like you had a good time and that made me feel really good too.  Just so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

In addition to being glad that you all were there, I cannot tell you how incredibly happy I am to see you and mom both looking and feeling so good.  Seriously, you both look amazing.  I know there are still some things you are unhappy about and I totally get that, but to me, you look incredible.  You're itty bitty!  And I can't believe someone so very tiny can have a little baby!  It's seriously impressive, Ab-- you've done a great job! And mom, too... I really think it's Emma that provided what she needed to do this.  She is so obviously crazy about that little girl (who can blame her?!) and I think she really wants to be healthy for her.  Don't you think?  She really did a great job sticking to her guns, but still allowing herself a treat.  I was really impressed.  Way to go, you and mom!  The two of you inspire me!

So, now, whittling of the middle.  Obviously, I cannot make any grand conclusions based on one thing that happened yesterday,but  I think I am going to have a little bit easier of a time now.  We had our meeting with Ingrid and the Employee Assistance Program yesterday and now that that's over with I feel like a huge weight has been lifted.  I was so much happier yesterday and I ate really very well and it didn't feel like a struggle.  I just ate well because I felt fine eating that way.  I can't believe how stressed out I've been over that damn meeting.  And I can't believe that this whole process dragged on and on and on from June until November.  That's just way too long and I think it's put a lot of pressure on me.  It was definitely very tough yesterday to speak up in front of Ingrid, but I did it and I gave concrete examples of the behaviors I find to be inappropriate and she listened.  She definitely didn't understand the concept of an example because she just kept trying to explain what happened in that one specific situation rather than addressing the behavior of concern, but the moderator seemed to do a pretty good job of bringing her back to the big picture.  Whether she grasped that or not, I don't know, but now that these things are out in the open I do feel a lot better about the whole situation.  She's not competent at her job-- she's a poor manager and, believe it or not, a very poor writer and that's not going to change, but her inappropriate behaviors can change and hopefully we can work toward that, if nothing else.  Regardless, that meeting is over and I feel really, really relieved.  I had a dream last night that mom and I were shopping at the grocery store and we couldn't find peanut butter anywhere and we were so confused and going around and around the store looking for it.  When I woke up, I felt worried about where the peanut butter was for a second before realizing how silly and insignificant that is... and then I felt great because it was the first time in a loooooong time that I hadn't had a stressful dream about work.  Getting this all over with is definitely a good thing for my subconscious!!  Hopefully for my waistline as well.  I just feel more relaxed right now.  I hope that will translate into better eating for a long while!!

I'm so glad we get to see you guys again so very soon-- just a couple more weeks!  I'm certain that Emma is going to be walking by then.  She's got to be just days away!  It's going to be so fun to see her running around your house on her birthday!  I can't wait!  And I'm looking forward to seeing Grizzly and Charlie too!  As crazy as I know Charlie is, they're fun little guys and I like snuggling them.  I wish Curly could come too, but perhaps in the summer.  Zach is apparently having an issue with Curly, and I got SUPER pissed about that yesterday... here's what I wrote to Seth about it:

"I'm sorry that I'm not going to be very calm right now, but for some reason them having issues with Curly does nothing but piss me off.  Like pit of my stomach angry.  Most of me just wants to scream at them to find a new damn place to live with their prissy dog, stinky cat, and asshole husband if they are having such problems.  But obviously, that is not helpful.

I guess we can work on training Curly to sit and stay by the sliding glass door when we open it, but you're right, we're going to have to force Zoe to be ok being around Curly a little bit more because her staying in the basement all the time makes her a novelty to Curly so when she is upstairs, Curly goes crazy.  I think the same is true with Zach.  He's so damn reclusive, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, that when he does come upstairs he seems new and exciting to Curly.  What his royal highness and their princess pup need to understand is that Curly is a puppy and it's going to take some time to train her.  She's only been in our house for a month and a half and she's doing really, really well already.  We didn't get our dog pre-trained like they did and we're working on it.  Zoe had, literally, 7 more months than Curly with the breeder/trainer so they skipped this whole part.  They are going to have to be patient with Curly and with us or they can choose to live somewhere else.  They can always take Zoe out front instead, they can go through the garage or the front door with her, which might be a little easier to keep Curly away from, especially since she really likes to lay by the sliding glass door for some reason.

Other than that, I've got no idea.  I'm sorry you had to deal with Zach being a pissy ass hole this morning and that you and Trista had to deal with his bad attitude to try to come up with a solution.  And I'm sorry now that my attitude is so bad, I just cannot stand him and him being a jerk to my dog is kind of the last straw-- she's my baby!!  She's only going to get better, she learns really very quickly, we are just going to have to keep working with her.  And like I said, all the training in the world can only do so much if Zach and Zoe are always novel and so distracting to her.  Either that or we can try to lean the short gate up in front of the door so that they can put Zoe out over it and then Curly won't be able to bolt."

Seriously, what a rant, right?!  But rather than explain the whole situation to you, I figured it would be easier to just paste that in here.  Seth's response was, "That pretty much hit the nail right on the head!!!" And that's all, which made me feel pretty good to have his support.  We basically said those things, only nicely, to Trista when I got home from work last night and she agreed.  We had Zoe upstairs with Curly a lot last night and I think it helped.  Zoe was even down on the ground with Curly for a while... it's just the novelty thing, you've got to let it wear off.  It was the same with Emma-- of course Curls is going to be excited at first!!  It's new and exciting!  But she calmed down around Emma quite a bit once she wasn't so novel anymore.  So yeah, can't wait for them to move out... at least they help with the mortgage!!!  Poor Seth is kind of worried because when Zach starts his new job he's going to be home a LOT more and that's going to be pretty bothersome for Seth.  Hopefully he'll stay holed up in the basement like he has been.  He's barely speaking to us at all right now.  Fine with me, I'd just prefer he'd stay silent without the hostile attitude on top of it.  But I can't have everything!!

Anyway, I'd better actually get back to work now.  I love you like crazy!!!!

Rachel