an apology

the author wishes to apologize for the scarcity and general lack-luster-y-ness of her blog posts of late.

you see, unfortunately the author's back decided to go partially "out" right before thanksgiving, and the author's chosen therapy of two days of long-distance driving...with a resting-n-eating-a-lot day in between...was surprisingly ineffective in curing this problem.

thus the author has been laying on her living room floor since saturday during which time she has left the house only to visit the chiropractor (twice) and (once) to install a very fancy and complicated bit of christmas garland in the home of friends whose holiday gift is said decoration. (in this scenario lovely husband jeff ascended a ladder with fairy-lighted and ribbon-bedecked artificial pine-and-holly garland whilst the author stood in the middle of the room with a laser pointer directing the placement of silk poinsettias and little sparkly clusters of green berries. more proof, if any was needed, that LHJ *is* in fact a saint whose patience & generosity knows no bounds.)

the rest of the time the author has been at leisure to worry in a free-ranging and far-flung manner on a number of issues including, but not limited to:

1. whether she will finish her assignments for the special and exciting caardvarks events that begin on saturday
2. whether she will finish her xmas cards in time to mail them so they will be received before st. patrick's day; and whether she will be able to start...much less finish...the mini-books she had planned for the nieces' christmas gifts
3. what on earth she will buy/make/give to everyone else on her holiday gift list
4. whether there will ever be a lasting and stable peace in the middle east...not to mention the incipient questions of iran...north korea...and pakistani... (the author is remembering why she made the decision several years ago NOT to watch the nightly news on a regular basis)
5. what it means that last night she dreamt she was canadian (??) and thus held a very large garage sale in order to finance a return to montreal...which oddly enough she was unable to locate on the map provided in said dream...
6. whether she will EVER get back to the gym and any kind of regular exercise before she weighs 900 pounds (the author has noticed that laying around doing nothing does *not* make you any less hungry than running around like a crazy person...the author is rather miffed about this point)
7. whether the houseguest she is expecting friday night has had a recent tetanus shot, and/or could be convinced that the wealth of dustbunnies currently residing in her house are deliberatly being cultivated and saved for some sort of avant-garde crafting project
8. what on earth the state of her workplace will be when she finally returns to it
9. whether her fellow bloggers will forgive her for being only semi-present on her own blog...and completely absent on theirs... (the author is pretty sure they will, since they are all very kind and extremely lovely!)
10. whether it would be helpful and/or theraputic to write down some of her worries in hopes that seeing them in print would reduce their scale and anxiety-producing-ness (the author can now say, to that point, a definitive, "nope")

the author leaves you with a renewed apology and a reminder that by far the most effective way to torture hyperactive and/or worry-prone persons is to make them lay about for several days doing NOTHING but watch daytime television...which she is pretty confident was devised entirely by fiends whose only purpose is to inspire adults to leave their homes as quickly as possible in search of gainful employment.

the author implores you to use this knowledge only for good, and never for evil.