how much longer until I'm unemployed?

I really feel like I should be writing here more often, but there are a couple of major problems with that:

1. The crappy weather lately means that our crappy Internet connection is even crappier than usual. So our connection is, as Dave puts it, up and down like a whore’s drawers. I cannot think of anything more infuriating than typing out a whole long entry just to lose it all with a “server not found” page the second that I hit Publish. So I’m trying not to write too much when I’m at home. I could (cough) potentially (cough cough) update my blog while I’m at work, but I try not to do that either, because I’m a paranoid freak. Plus, the girl who’ll be replacing me at my job started yesterday, so she’s been hovering around my monitor a lot lately – since, you know, I’m training her and all – and that makes blogging even more problematic.

2. There is this one major thing that’s kinda-sorta-maybe-potentially going to happen within the next week or two, which really affects Dave more than me, but I’m not allowed to talk about it until things are at least somewhat more official. I hate being all vague and mysterious, but them’s the rules. Anyhow, that’s been taking up the majority of my brain-space lately.

So, new topic: Thanksgiving! It’s going to be pretty mellow this year, just me, Dave and Kris (it’s her first Thanksgiving on her own, so I invited her to come over and join us). However, I’m going to be doubling up on most of the things that I cook, so I can freeze half of it for Christmas. Since my entire family is going to be descending on us for the holidays, and I’m going to be something like 35 weeks pregnant then, it makes sense to get as much of the work as possible done in advance.

Which brings me to the very bizarre conversation that I had with my mom recently. I was looking over my Grandmother’s stuffing recipe (we call it dressing in the south, thank you very much), and I saw that it required one major ingredient – Pepperidge Farm cornbread stuffing mix – that isn’t available anywhere around here. I know this because I tried to make it for Christmas last year, and I had to use the herbed stuffing mix instead, and let me tell you, that is just not the same thing.

When I told my mom that I couldn’t find the exact type of stuffing mix, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She went to the grocery store in Mississippi, bought the cornbread stuffing mix, and MAILED IT TO ME. Because lord help us all, we cannot have my dad grumbling over the dinner table that my dressing isn’t as good as my Grandmother’s. I think my mom did it more for my benefit than anyone else’s, since I’m already a ball of hormones and if anyone gripes about my cooking, I just might lunge across the table and stab them in the eye with a slotted serving spoon.

Or, you know, maybe she just wants to make sure that her husband lives long enough to meet his first grandchild. Six of one, half dozen of the other…