Catching Up, Continued...

Before I can really start blogging about the things that are happening now, there's a good bit more information about the last (checks blog archives, feels faint) year or so that will help give some context and be generally useful. Otherwise, I imagine reading any current entries would be like missing a book out of a series; you have a general idea what's going on, but you stop and think, "wait, what???" every so often. So in no particular order, here are some things that have happened since my blog hiatus:

• I grew to love bullet points. They make things ever so much easier and are nicer to read than huge, long, bulky paragraphs
• As you'll remember, I was fired from the really great job that I loved (but had stopped loving for a lot of reasons) and sent back to the customer service department this past December
• I languished until July, when I applied for a job and was offered a different, better, brand-new job. I developed a two-week training program and am in charge of training our customer service new hires. As Dadums is fond of pointing out, I'm their first consistent point of contact with the company, and it's nice to be trusted with that.
• I celebrated the two year anniversary of the alien spine baby removal surgery. Mostly, I just breathed deeply and spent a lot of time being quietly thankful
• One of my Jersey Girls agreed to marry the excellent young man who was smart enough to recognize her awesomeness and awesome enough that she said yes quite happily to his proposal
• Aforementioned Jersey Girl has requested that I be a bridesmaid in her wedding. This is the first time I'll get to be a bridesmaid, and I'm incredibly honored that she asked me to be part of such an important day
• While we're on the topic of engagements, it's only fair to mention that Jim and I aren't engaged. There's a fair chance that we may never be, but we're taking things slowly and figuring out what we each want
• Speaking of Jim, he's doing pretty well himself. He joined a deck hockey league, is kicking butt on his fantasy football team, and has some good ideas about what he wants to pursue for a career
• I was recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism (genetics, man. go figure!) and started a synthetic thyroid hormone regimen a couple of weeks ago. I'm shedding heavily (a side effect that usually stops within the first three to four months) and dealing with wild mood swings and unexpected hunger pangs. But I'm much less inclined to sleep for twelve hours and wake up tired, which is a huge plus (note to self: stop putting off seeing your doctor when something doesn't feel right. filed under: lessons i should've learned ages ago but which never seem to stick). I've also found some motivation to do things like knit and spin and clean my house (but not too much)
  
• Speaking of the house, Jim and I are going to sign a one-year extension on our lease this week. We'll be living here minus the housemates. I can't help but think that things will go more smoothly for us if we're living as a couple without the stress of acting as the grownups/parents/people who make all the decisions to two other adults

Those are all the things I can think of at the moment. I'm sure there are things I'm leaving out or forgetting, but we'll cover them as we go from here. This weekend's weather was the very best of Pennsylvania in the fall--warm but brisk without the sun, bright, mellow, and downright chilly with all the wind. Now that we've had our two days of sunlight, we'll go back to our usual weather pattern--gray, miserable, grudging rain. That should last until December or January, when we'll switch to spiteful, icy sleet with too much snow for sanity to persevere. I hope your weekend was just the right balance of peace and excitement, here's to a new week tomorrow.