I started back to work last week - Wednesday the 21st was my first day. God it was exhausting. I'm not meant to get up before 7:00 am - I'm meant to have slow, leisurely mornings - sleeping in until nearly 10:00 and then watching Cityline with Marilyn Dennis while yelling at the television set.

Thursday, my second day at work, at 9:20 a.m. the school calls me to tell me that Satchel had an accident during gym and needs to be treated. The vice principal calls me 10 minutes after the first call to tell me that he thinks it's serious, that Satchel may have broken his ankle and should go to the hospital. In fact he'll take him there if I can meet up with him.

The ambulance finally arrives and Satchel gets wheeled to admissions. 3 hours, 2 x-rays, 2 examinations, 1 small room shared with a woman who's 20-month-old daughter hasn't pooped in a few days, but makes up for it in our room, Satchel's diagnosed with a sprain and we're discharged with a brand new pair of crutches ($28 but I can donate them to a third world country when we're finished with them - probably by Monday).

Friday, Paul stays home with Satchel and I actually make it through my third day at work without incident, receiving the most beautiful arrangement of flowers from a woman I work with.

Sadly I wanted Satchel to walk to a store to buy a lottery ticket with me. I was going to press the money into his hand and have him ask for it because it's the only way I figured I'd have a shot at winning. I'm not a very lucky person and he usually is, but I guess not any more now that he's my little Mr. Hop Along.

Today I went to Royal Lighting to pick up my second sputnik light fixture for over the island. As is my way I choose the worst possible route to get there but finally make it to the shop. I pick up my light fixture and also a dimmer switch because when the sputnik light is turned on, with 24 bulbs lit, you can probably make out my kitchen from space. Because the combined wattage for both lights is insane, I had to buy a 1000 watt dimmer switch which ended up costing $125 - instead of $40 like the little 600 watt capacity dimmers. I brought our new sputnik home to find out the manufacturer changed the mounting plate so it doesn't look anything like our original one and it's kind of decorative which is kind way of saying "ugly." After 2 hours of repeated calls to the store they're now trying to track down an original plate and I have taken a liking to beer.

John is leaving daily messages on our machine asking for payment, no longer in a nice tone, more of a "I WANT TO GET PAID. NOW!!!!!!" tone. I keep ignoring the messages telling Paul to deal with him. I'd only end up in another fight.

I'll write more tomorrow - time for bed.