I have to agree with Sally on this one so I decided to stay home from work today.

A few weeks ago Freya figure out she’s strong enough to push me over when I’m sitting on the floor. She pushes with her chest against mine and steps forward. If that takes her too long, she puts her paws on my shoulders and uses all her body weight so she can win. Once she succeeds in knocking me over, she sits on my stomach or chest and licks my face & nibbles on my ears. This time she tried to position herself as I was falling over and some hard part of her (I don’t know if it was her head or one of her legs) connected with my mouth. I knew as soon as they connected it wasn’t going to be good. I pushed her away from me so I could go look at the damages. I have 2 fat lips with a blood blister on the lower lip. It hurts. A lot.

I planned on taking tomorrow of so I could finish moving out of the house so I called my Manager & explained that I’d be taking today off instead. The fat lips combined with all the other bumps, bruises, cuts, and slight limp I have from moving just doesn’t look good.

As I’ve been packing my house I keep finding these little treasures - items I forgot about, thought I lost, or were a victim of divorce division. Pictures of Mom, pictures from our Sliding Parties at Jeanne & Ken’s old place, pictures from Bonnie’s college graduation, and a video of my high school play were among some of my favorite treasures.

I’m packing up my kitchen tonight and laughing at myself as I was putting my bajillion cookbooks into a box - laughing at the fact that I really do own a bajillion cookbooks but I always go online to find a recipe. While I was pulling some cookbooks out of the cupboard, I came across Mom’s canning books. I decided to flip though them quick to see what was there (I truly didn’t know what books I had because they’ve been getting moved from cupboard to box to cupboard for the past 7 1/2 years). The manual to our old microwave was in the middle of the small stack I went through. Peaking out from the edges of the manual I saw my Mom’s handwriting on lined paper with slightly folded edges with the letters “LLS” at the top of the page.

My heart jumped because I knew exactly what I found… some of her holiday baking recipes - in her own handwriting… right there in my hands. I closed my eyes and hugged the manual for a few minutes before I opened it. At the top was the Popcorn Balls recipe I use to make with her while I was growing up and the other was for Holiday Chocolate Butter Cookies. Those two handwritten recipes made years of holiday traditions quickly flash through my head. My favorite being the time I spent with Mom making the popcorn balls for my tribe’s annual Christmas Party. We made so many of those darn popcorn balls one year that I decided to use that for the recipe I submitted to my elementary class’ Christmas Cookbook.

This has been making me laugh for the past two days. You may have already watched it you’re my friend on Facebook or Myspace. I just had to share it here, too, because its been making me laugh for 2 days.

Lookie what I got in the mail today!

I honestly couldn’t help but laugh. What are the chances that I’d get a letter addressed to Jeannie the day after I went on a rant about people calling me by the wrong name?

Let’s review this again…

My name is NOT Jeanne or Jeannie. It’s not Bonnie. It’s not Pauline or Sharon. My name is Jennie or Kit-Kat. Jen is acceptable but I don’t really prefer it.

It’s very rare that I’m called Pauline or Sharon but it happened on a few occasions when I was working for my tribe. I was even called Jessie (my mom’s name) a couple times. However, its a regular occurrence that I’m called Bonnie or Jeanne. It’s almost to the point where they could be my alter ego (or something). Jeanne & Bonnie are the sisters I either looked most like or had most in common with but when the person sees me on a daily basis and them almost never, why is getting my name right such an incredibly hard concept. Today I corrected someone three times but she still kept calling me Jeanne. I realize Jeanne is close to Jennie but what the hell.

I swear to god if someone ever calls me by my brother’s name, they’re gonna get an eye poked out. The only time that was acceptable was when Mom use to call us “Sharon, Jeanne, Pauline, Bonnie, Chip, Kit-Kat… YOU!” *giggle*