hello?

i'm here. I'm only mostly dead.

This poor blog has been a little neglected. Sorry.

We are slowly on the up and up as far as the germ infestation goes, we hope. It's been brutal. We dropped like flies, one after the other. Conan is luckily the only one who has escaped the infiltration with mere sniffles.

I've been in the dumps. Sick and confined to home; not feeling like cooking, or cleaning, or concentrating. The sewing machine sounded like a jack-hammer in my head, so not even a finished project to show for it. No inspiration, no ambition, nothing to report. Big, fat, bummer. It was the dumps.

You know the place, where you just feel...well...dumpy, for no justifiable reason. Just tired, and dumpy. Focusing on the fails and not forcing any wins. And then you feel even dumpier because it's no fair for the kids to have a mom who's a dump. It gets ya down.

The good thing about the dumps is you have to come out of them. Climbing out of the trenches isn't ever clean, or convenient, no matter how deep they are. But it's a good workout.

And you make side-dishes again.

I'm grateful this has been a very shallow trench. It's a lot easier to see others when you're looking, rather than just staring at your own hands and feet trying to get out of your own lame-o hole. Actually, once you look around a bit and see someone elses dump, your ditch isn't really so bad anymore. And then you feel silly. And grateful. And compassion.

And you get out. Then you can see how you got down there in the first place. I'm pretty sure I was pushed. By selfishness. And flu season.

So no finishes of the un-finished to report. But progress was made. It was good.

I'm grateful for the dumps.

Push on, dumpy soldier. Wipe yourself off, and march.

With a much stronger step.

And cheesy analogies.