A very full week.

About a million things happened this last week. My sweet, darling and so very old parents flew in on last Monday night and just left this afternoon. It was a good visit. But again, they make me face mortality. Every time I see my Mom, she is just a little more forgetful and a little more absent... it is like she is already taking the first steps down that last highway.

But the visit was wonderful. We ate a ton... ten tons of delicious, fattening, decadent food. We drank a little to much and laughed and talked and just had a blast. Great grand daughter Livie was a star, sweet, funny, charming, cute and oh so good. We shopped and played games. I spent a ton of mommy and daddies money. Got a new vacuum, bought a mountain of new clothes for grand baby #2 who will be arriving early this spring (we're getting another girl... hells yes... girls rule).

We rented the movies, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl That Played with Fire". They were both in Swedish with English subtitles. I very much enjoyed that because I did not have to turn up the volume to ear blasting levels for my mother and father who cannot hear. We could just read. The downside is Master, with his dyslexia cannot quite keep up with the reading and ended up wandering off. He also had not read the books and I think the movie is easier to follow if you had read them first. But I very much like the movies though. They followed the books pretty well, and the actors fit how I pictured them to be as I read. I would recommend them, but you really ought to read the books first.

Thanks giving was a huge success and I always get so many compliments and rave reviews for my cooking that it totally strokes my ego. The last of it is simmering on the stove as I write, rich broth and thick chewy homemade noodles. I can hardly wait for Master to wake up and I can eat.

I am back to work this week and holey moley, the crazy kids are loonier than you can imagine. But for some reason, I am not the slightest bit stressed. It was the weirdest thing, I was cleaning vomit, urine and fecal matter off a kid and the walls of the seclusion room after a particularly nasty psychotic temper tantrum. All my coworkers were totally grossed out and I was all business as usual.

It was nice to come home to an empty house this afternoon. I did a quick sweep, gathering up all the dirty towels and putting right all the things that the old people had put wrong. When Master got home, it was so right to be able to kneel and place my forehead on the floor between his feet. I had missed that a lot. He scolded me sharply for not having my collar and cuffs on... and actually gave me a little kick right in the ass as I scrambled to put them on.

Well he finally woke up. And the soup is amazing.