Yesterday afternoon, after we arrived home from practice, I noticed Annie had eaten a quarter of the pie that Steffi had made for us. I had left the pie on top of the toaster oven, on the counter. In a fit of anger, I followed Annie around the house yelling at her, kicking her crate in frustration that she ate the food I wanted. Again. That dog has eaten more of my food, and more of my expensive, tasty food than we've spent on Bella in vet bills (and she's had two surgeries). I put her in her crate, and insisted she stay there, while I went to sleep to dissipate.

This morning, I was still angry at Annie. I pretty much ignored her before I left for work, then ignored her when I arrived after work. I fed them, then went outside to garden. I had watered the tomatoes and pumpkins, and was surprised the cucumbers were actually growing. I had covered the ground around them with mulch, and I think it helped keep the ground moist so that they could grow well.

I gave Bella some tomatoes and snap peas while I was gardening after she came out to watch me through the fence, but continued to ignore Annie when she sat next to Bella.

I've been trying to bring in a bucket of mulch and take out a bucket of weeds when I head into the garden. As I was picking weeds, I heard a cat purring nearby. I looked around, puzzled that a cat would be in my garden, and so close to me. Not seeing any cat, I looked around for Bella, thinking that she might be snuffling around outside the garden. She wasn't there, so I looked around. Where is that darn cat?

I looked up to see a humming bird dancing a little over a yard from me. It hummed along, sounding just like a purring cat as is flitted around. Amazed, I watched it as it landed on one of my tomato plants. I raised my hand, and reached out to it. It flew over to my hand, and buzzed around it, purring as it did, never quite landing on it, but close, about a hand width away.

It was amazing. The little bird flew around my hand, then circled my head, before flying up to the dead apricot tree to sit. It waited for a while, then flew around my upheld hand before buzzing away.

The moment was incredible, a small gift from nature.

Afterward, I felt my anger at Annie, which I had nurtured all day, just disappear. I gave her some snap peas, then her after-dinner treat. She seemed to understand I wan no longer angry at her, as she followed me around during my field run at Cherry Chase, seemingly happy that I wasn't ignoring her any longer.

The other garden surprise was the discovery the plant I thought was a unproducing acorn squash was actually a well producing zucchini plant.

Not that I have good luck with zucchini or anything. This plant has silver veins in its leaves. Will it, too, be bitter?

Mike's back! Mike's back! Oh, praise whatever deity you think may exist, Mike's back!

And now that he's back, changes are going to be made!

All of them good.

I somehow convinced him that daily walks to discuss daily progresses are a good thing. So, we discussed the current business status while running through the Sunnyvale parking lot maze at Evelyn, just north of Murphy. Mike looked at the progress of the maze, and skipped over lines, walking to the center, then back out, following the maze with his eyes. I, on the other hand, ran along the entire maze, giggling the whole time.

Mike, once again, had some brilliant insights. He commented that I always seem to have a stone around my neck, that I'm weighed down by some project that prevents me from doing the work I want to be doing. It frustrates me, it frustrates Mike, and it makes Doyle just laugh at the both of us.

He made the comment, and I had to wonder if I do this on purpose. I've been in the same position for two years now. Is it a defense mechanism? If I never work on my projects, they can't fail, right? What a horrible, horrible thought: that a fear of failing stops me from trying.

We talked and walked and talked and walked, and decided that half of our hours will be internal project hours. That's forty hours a week working on our own projects, 160 hours a month. We also agreed to increase our hourly rates so that we don't have as much work, giving us the time to work on our projects. Both of these are suggestions Wook suggested, and Mike whole-hearted agreed with them, so I'm happy and excited about the changes.

This time, the changes are going to stick. I'm beyond determined about this. Things have to change, and this feels like the right way to go.

The nicest thing about tearing your ACL is the fact that you have one concentrated injury - and that's what hurts. There's no ifs ands or buts, if it hurts - it's your ACL.

Now that I'm on the mend, despite the ever present swelling anytime I do more than sit on the couch for a day, I'm back in the world of varied aches, pains and scratches. Suddenly it's not about crawling into bed the same way to avoid putting weight on the bum knee; it's suddenly about inching my way in without bumping the scratches on my right elbow, right knee, left ankle, right toes and oh yeah still not putting weight on that knee.

However, the nicest thing about tearing your ACL is not really so nice in the end. I am so glad to be horsing around in pools, waltzing on terraces and playing ultimate again! Thank you Dr. Masters!

And, after all that work, I managed to lose the client anyway.

If I had known in the end that I was going to lose the client, I wouldn't have worked the 100+ hours on the project. Nor would I have missed half the July 4th festivities at Adam's, the after wedding fun, the various ultimate practices, the extra time at communal dinner, the runs and the sleep. I would have said, screw it, the grapes are sour anyway, and enjoyed the last two weeks.

Though, probably feeling guilty the whole time.

The day started off crappy, with my staying up until 6 in the morning trying to finish a site feature that later in the day I found out wasn't actually in the original statement of work. Essentially, I was done on Monday, but the client confused two projects, and insisted a feature be added. I didn't realize it shouldn't be, and spent the last four days trying to put it in. Nothing like finding out Monday at 9:30 PM that a feature needs to be in by, oh, that day's morning to add stress to a project.

Yesterday, I had sent a note to the client letting them know I couldn't work Thursday or Friday on the current project that's been sucking up all my time, but that I'd be working on the client's other projects. Instead of being thankful for the heads up, they completely freaked, called up Mike on his vacation, demanded he contact me.

Because, you know, Mike is my dad and he tells me what to do.

The worse part is that I ended up spending all of Thursday working on the same project anyway.

I give up. I'm done with clients. As soon as I finish up the current projects for current clients, I'm not planning on taking on any more. If some amazing client project comes along, I'll probably take it. But I'm not seeking any new clients out.

Instead, I'm going to work on our projects, build our products up. Finally, finally, finally. Our work.

Kitt and I have been discussing trading cars for weeks so that Kitt can be the fourth best roomie ever and get me new rockin' tires on my car. So far as a roomie she's slightly behind Kris who catapulted me into backflips in the pool on Tuesday (but to be fair Kitt has never tried that - who knows maybe she could catapult me higher!)

So far, one or both of us has forgotten the plan and I keep ending up at work with my own car. It's starting to be a little unnerving as the gods keep sending me signals in the form of ripped rubber on the freeway (once even in my lane!). So this morning I took the bull by the horns and stole Kitt's car.

Ridiculously early I stepped out of the house with the excitement of being able to be a convertable owner for a day - too bad my perfect sexy red dress has yet to be found.

I awkwardly slipped into the driver's seat in my heels and carefully backed out of the driveway experiencing for the first time what it was like to drive before the wonderful invention of the rearview mirror.

Completely yuppied-up after a quick stop at Starbucks, I pulled into the gas station to uphold my end of the bargain for the car switch - filling up Kitt's tank. Finding the gas tank opener button was a new puzzle and not the fun kind like sudoku or LSAT logic games. Very difficult. Hmmm....good thing I had a sports car today because by this point I was running late.

So boo - Honda decided the best place to hide a gas tank button is on the doorframe, which of course is only visible if the door's open! But...yay - Honda decided it was a good idea to put a label on the inside of the gas tank with instructions on which kind of gas needs to go in the car. So I was off to work and getting very good at the km/hr to mi/hr mental conversion.

Now I've decided that the reason white collar men in their midlife crises don't get convertables to compensate, they get convertables because the only thing that keeps a person who works in an office for at least eight hours a day in a cubicle without windows somewhat sane is to put the top down and fly during a lunch break. But so much for my sanity anyway, since I'm headed to law school in a month!

The only thing that saved my rotten full-time, rut of a day was the thought of being able to put the top down and speed down the freeway, which is exactly what I did. I was falling asleep at my desk after an awesome four-day weekend but as soon as I hit 120 km/hr I was wide awake!

And then the ice cream on the cake was Kitt waiting at the end of my temporary forget-about-everything-but-the-wind fix to help me with a more permanent fix. Okay maybe Kitt could be second best roomie ever. Obviously my day in Kitt's car was infinitely better than her day in my car. Thanks roomie!!!!