Settling Down

Dear Friends,

Thank you for all your well-wishes in recent weeks.  It has been a rough time for the PM, yours truly, and all kind thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated.

This year has been a rough year and I'm glad next year starts off with some changes.  The job I am leaving has been good in a number of ways over the years, but anything can go sour, and so did this.  I feel blessed that I found a job in the same field and two of my co-workers have also accepted positions there.  I feel especially blessed that on the day a client killed himself (which could have been a train wreck for my career), some of the most high ups at the government agency which funds us decided to entrust me to continue working with my clients.  She has given permission for them to transfer to my new job as well.

The thing about my client is especially hard; when you work in mental health, you know this could happen to someone you work with and prepare for it.  I do not take any responsibility for the action, and the investigation shows I did everything I should have. However, having come uncomfortably close to suicide myself once or twice, it does have an emotional impact for me that it probably does not for other people.

Combined with the death of my father, the fatigue from my fibromyalgia and sleep apnea and the 'eustresses' of two marriages in my family, this second half of the year has been tumultuous.  Part of the reason I have not been posting as much here.

Hopefully things will settle down in the  new year and we will be dreaming up fun activities for all friends and associates of the Realm in 2014.

Topsy Turvey emotions!

The Mommeh has been having mood swings a lot lately!  They happened according to these events, in this order:

Good news is that she has another fund-raising position doing exactly the same kind of work.

Bad news is that one of her clients dies in a sad way.

Good news is that she is told she gets to move her clients with her and gets to continue working with them.

Good news is that she is cleared of any wrong-doing in the death.

Believe me, she understands that the three good things do not really make up for the bad one in some ways.  But she appreciates the confidence shown in her and we are both happy that the Realm will not suffer much financially.

Mommeh has several days off between the two places and she thinks she will do a lot of things around the annex.  We will see!

We hope all our Christian friends have a Merry Christmas.

Snow!

Since the PM tends to stay home a bit more when it snows, I always look forward to it.  I know others do not agree and I do not like it when she has to go out in the icky stuff!  I understand stoopid humans can behave even more stoopidly in the snow.  Hard to believe, but there it is.

We hope all of you are staying warm and dry!  If you know of some yardcats that are getting cold, Pinterest has interesting suggestions for making homes out of Rubbermaid crates for them.......just a thought.  We wish we had known about this when we were still on Capitol Drive and had yardcats......

More Sadness

As you know, the PM is the primary fundraiser for the kingdom.  She found out this week that, due to bad behavior on her boss' part, her agency is losing the contract which pays for her job.  So this job ends at the end of the month.  She has been very sad because she has so much loved this job, her clients and her co-workers.  She is also angry and scared about having to look for another fundraising opportunity.

Please keep us all in your prayers and wishes during this time and understand if we are not around quite as much.

Quiet time

We have been having a quiet fall since the PM's Daddah died.  She has been tired from the trip and there have been complications at fundraising.  So we are all trying to rest and help her feel better.

The PM was able to sit shiva one night when some lovely friends of hers offered to host it; our current annex is too small to hold enough humans to have the service. She was very happy to do this and we are all grateful to her friends who hosted it.

We lit a different menorah this year as things seem more solemn this year.  Normally we light the royal menorah, which is a purple tabby cat with a pink polka-dot bow tie.  This year, we lit a brass one which goes with some brass cranes the PM brought back from her Daddah's house.  Here is a picture:

 

Those are also Shabbat candles burning with them.  We took this picture on Friday night.

 

TTYL,  Happy Hannukah, everyone!