The Blog of mamapolo

First, allow me to say that I do know all about paragraphs & stuff (Marji!) but I can only use the advanced editor when I use the MSN browser - and when I try to use the MSN browser for the last two days, it freezes and I have to use Task Manager to make it go away. So, take a red pen and make those funny paragraph marks wherever you feel they're appropriate. We'll just call it interactive editing. I returned to work a week ago this past Monday after 66 days' absence, and recommended to my superiors that they assign me to short-term projects like energy assistance applications, since there was no telling when it might be necessary for me to step out again. Tim had the tests on Monday that will determine when the lung surgery will happen, followed by chemotherapy. In their superior wisdom, they chose to put me back into a caseload right away, which is certainly their prerogative. If I knew everything they know, I guess I'd be management. However, after eight days back at work, I began to be suspicious. How come my inbox wasn't overflowing like everyone else's - like mine used to? Where were all the new applications? I finished the filing from before I left (the one thing I never got around to doing-there was a LOT). Then I went to my boss and said, "I'm about to say something you may never have heard in your thirty-odd years here. I don't have anything to do." I suggested it would be a good idea if I helped my team members get their filing caught up, which WAS a good idea - except I had no clue how little accustomed my body was to bending and kneeling. About an hour from now, everything's going to seize up and I'm going to be walking like the Tin Man. After I thought about the no-application thing for a while, I went back to my sup and said, "Y'know, the more I think about this..." He said, "You ARE back in the application rotation, aren't you?" I shrugged. I dunno. I assumed they put me in the rotation. "Was I supposed to sign up for it somehow?" "No, no," he assured me. "But I'd better fire off an email." (For those of you NOT in a government bureaucracy, "firing off an email" is the bureaucratic version of a warning shot off the bow.) So I'm guessing the party will be over sometime around tomorrow afternoon. (That's how long it normally takes if there's an emergency and immediate reaction to someone firing off an email.) I spoke to my daughter tonight (as I do every night) and she said she read the story "Date with My Daughter" I'd copied off EP and emailed her. "It brought tears to my eyes," she said. "Aw, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry," I said. "Yes, you DID! Nobody writes stuff like that if they don't want tears," she said, laughing. I'm going to go position myself so I'm in a comfortable situation when my joints lock up after the day's filing. Creak, creak, creak.