Not an omen for the New Year!

Today is not, and I repeat not, going to be an omen for how the New Year will go!

Although today has been, to put it mildly, a little crazy, I am going to go home, smile, relax and be mellow for the beginning of 2008 -- and bring in the New Year with hope, optimism and calm!

A snapshot of today:

• Started work on the Get Out calendar at work
• Heard there was trouble with Media Grid, worried that the photos I put through Friday to be ready early to use today would not be in the system. I was right. They were not. Decided to worry about that later. Because I could not start work on the Neighbors page for Wednesday until I was finished with the Get Out calendar stuff, anyway.
• Suddenly, my friend and colleague Barb rushed to the bathroom, saying she had a nose bleed. That was an understatement. She bled a lot, and it kept bleeding. I took her to the emergency room, where her partner Amy met us. They both said for me to return to work, that Amy would hang out with Barb, so I did.
• But I was so rattled when I did that as I was entering items into the online calendar, I forgot to put "2008" instead of "2007," and so a number of things did not get entered onto the calendar.
• Amy called and said that Barb was doing OK and that she would come back to work Wednesday. (She wanted to come back today, but Dawn told her to go home and rest, that Dawn had done the TV page and that Rod was doing the eddy page.)
• Oh, and I took a break for a couple minutes, to clear my mind, and I checked out myspace. Amalia has a bunch of darling new photos from the Megsmalia "Chrismukkah" party. I clicked on David's picture and discovered that, although I cannot look at his myspace page, I could send him a myspace message. So, on the spur of the moment, I did that, just asking about when we will see David and Amalia on Jan. 20, when they are in Indianapolis for the wedding of one of David's friends -- if I could have his mom's email so I could ask what we could bring. (Now, in retrospect, that does make sense for me to ask that, because wouldn't it be silly for me to ask Amalia to ask David to ask his parents what we should bring? And I would absolutely hate to show up emptyhanded!)
• But then, in between everything else, I got all worried. What if Amalia (and David) think it is incredibly pushy of me to send him a myspace message? Did I overstep? Am I a pushy, crazy mom?
• Then I got a call from Abby which I won't go into here, other than I was worried about what she was up to (although it turned out she had talked to her dad and all was well).
• Dawn offered to help me out and do the Neighbors page for Wednesday.
• I heard that the prepress dept. was gone for the day and no photos could be processed today.
  
• Dawn and I discovered that part of the photos I had planned to use for Wednesday's page had come through, and part not. So we talked about what to use.
  
• We had to leave the page on Janice's chair with one photo still to be put on by the night crew tomorrow night.
  
• I went through and fixed all the calendar entries that I had earlier screwed up.
• I finished editing the calendar stuff.

And now, I am out of here, to go home and forget this day and be mellow. Except for one thing. It feels so good to be surrounded by my working teammates. Each of them is so encouraging when something is screwed up. And each of them works really hard. It's a really collaborative atmosphere. I am inspired and encouraged by the people who surround me at work.

So, I will take the kindness and flexibility of my desk-mates today as a good omen for the year to come, and I will go home and cuddle and be mellow and relax, and talk to Jordie about things to come in the New Year...and I will call my mom and each of the kids and tell them I love them and to have a good, good year...

Sigh. A long, slow, breath.

Happy New Year.