Last night, while working late, I noticed I had gunk in my right eye. My eye has been bothering me all day, being dry or slightly itchy, but I didn't think much of it.

This morning when I woke up, however, I knew something was wrong: my eye was glued shut with even more gunk than last night. I evetually managed to remove most of it from the edges of my eye, and opened it, but the missing eyelashes will be sorely missed.

A quick phone call to the doctor, an appointment with another doctor in my doctor's office, and I was on my way at lunch. I was pretty sure the problem was pink-eye, as Mike had it a few weeks back. He had pink-eye really badly, and I really wanted to avoid such luck. I dashed off to the doctor for the first appointment they had available.

I think the worst part of the doctor's office is actually the weighing in before the actual appointment. There's no way to get fully naked, go to the bathroom, not eat, anything and everything to have the lowest weight possible, so I give up and just take the keys, camera, phone and wallet out of the pockets and hop on the scale. Today's weight was a shocker: I've gained 10 pounds in the last 10 months, which is the biggest weight gain I have ever had. I weighed 105 heading into college and 106 heading out. I weighed 118 when Kris and I first started, and it took me 7 years to add another 8 pounds to that weight. Adding another 10 to that in 10 months seems a bit unusual, and has me slightly concerned.

Of course, it might be something in the water. I know 8 women due in the next 8 months (Megan, Katie, Gena, Lisa, Christina, Nichole, Jane and Heidi), what's one more?

After a few minutes in the doctor's office, the doctor came in and I described my symptoms. She listened, asked questions, looked in my ears and eyes, asked more questions, then explained to me that, yes, I had pink-eye, but most eye infections are viral, and antibiotics have no effect on viral infections. Yes, I knew this, and, darn it, I knew what was coming.

No happy pill to make everything better. Instead, five days of flushing my eyes with eyedrops every hour. Sigh.

Sometimes homeopathic, natural solutions are sucky suck. Yes, I know the antibiotics won't be effective, but I'd love a happy little pill so that my eyes stop itching and producing gunk.

Not being well known for biting my tongue, I'm struggling with not being provoked into anger at this point. I'm getting constant false accusations about actions I didn't do. I'm getting bombarded with questions as to why a task isn't done, when the time I spend explaining what I'm about to do is taking away from the time I could be using actually doing what I said I'll be doing.

The worst? "Why aren't you done with A?" "Well, you asked me to do B, C, D, E and F. So I did." "That's fine, but why aren't you done with A?" "Uh, because you told me to do B, C, D, E and F?"

I think I'm unable to deal with anyone else's obsessive behaviour, and this constant fixation with not having A done is causing everything to slip. It's getting to the point that, despite my attempts to not stress about this, their stress is spilling over into my life and seriously degrading my quality of life.

How the heck did this turn so bad so quickly? I feel myself complaining a lot now, and I really, really don't want to be that way.

Mom arrived last night late. Kris and I had just enough time for me to arrive home from Vancouver, dash home and clean up, then rush to the other airport and pick up Mom. She had to wait only a few minutes (okay, five) for me to show up.

Today was a ridiculously casual day. Given the stress of yesterday (including the issues with the difficult client), hanging out with Mom was a great relief. Kris had called mid-morning, asking if I could bring his forgotten ultimate gear to Greer at lunch, so Mom and I dashed up to Palo Alto to help Kris out. We then continued up to downtown to Title IX, Waterworks and Bay Leaf, a vegetarian (vegan?) restaurant that Messina introduced me to.

We dashed back home and tackled my to-do list. That to-do list that has been growing beyond my ability to keep up. Mom managed to get a few items done, for which I'm grateful, but just having her here was the best part.

Mom is in town for the gallery opening of Karen's Retrospective showing. It's a bittersweet event, as it's the biggest of any of Karen's gallery showings, but it's a retrospective, a view back on her life, now that she's dead (why is that so hard to write? I wanted to write, "now that's she's passed on" or "left us", but all that does is gloss over the fundamental fact that she's dead, she's not making any more artwork, she's not going to meet up with Kris and I for lunch, she's not going to play with her dog, or redo her house, or any of that, she's dead).

We'll head over tomorrow around noon. Kris has been very supportive of this. Even BJ and Chris will be in town. It'll be good to see them tomorrow.

The most humourous part of the day was when Mom said something personal, then turned to me and asked, "You're not going to blog that, are you?"

No, Mom, I won't write about your sex life. If I can't write about mine, it seems quite unfair to write about yours on the Intarweb.

What happens when your highest level of stress is caused by the client who pays the lowest fee? What happens when the demands of one client are disproportionate to the returns received?

Most people cut bait, instead of trying to fish. Or they cut bait much sooner than expected.

I tend to bill about 30-50% more hours a month than Mike does. He earns 50-100% more a month than I do. If I'm not deriving serious joy from those extra hours, I'm doing something wrong.

I'm doing something wrong.

I've been unhappy for a long while now. My unhappiness has been growing along with my stress levels. My joy in life, however, has been decreasing, along with my love of ultimate (playing, organizing, developing), desire to go outside and hike, my time spent gardening, number of books I've read for pleasure and hours spent with Kris.

It took me a long while to figure out that the first three paragraphs were seriousl contributors to the results of the fifth paragraph.

But now that I've figured it out (Mike and Kris figured it out months ago), I want fix the problem, adjust things, move on. I want to enjoy life, ultimate, programming, gardening, reading, Kris (and not in that order). Except that I'm already committed. Committed to projects, committed to solving problems, committed to one more task.

One more.

One more.

Is it always one more? Does it have to always be one more?

No. And that's my new answer. No.

No no no no no no no no no.

Many years ago, like the year 2000, Kris ended up in the hospital for the first time in our relationship. It was terribly stressful for me, being my first time heading into the hospital, not knowing what to expect, what was happening with Kris, what I should do. I had never been in the hospital for anything but a visit here and there, certainly never overnight, huddled on the guest chair, passing out at 5:30 am, two hours after Kris had.

Kris stayed three days that first time. The first night, I was too exhausted to notice much around me. The second night, however, I was more aware, and noticed the hospital noises. I heard her first around midnight.

"Mary!"

But it sounded more like "MaaaAAAaaare reeeeeee!"

Across the hall from Kris was a very old woman. At the top of her lungs, she would cry out every minute or so for Mary. Sometimes she would call out "Help me!" but it was consistent.

Consistently frightening. This woman was in need! She was calling out! Why was no one helping her?

I know! I'll help her!

Yea, clearly a retarded thought, but hearing this old lady call out every minute for who knows how long was clouding my judgement.

Clearly.

So, I wandered over. As I was leaving Kris' room, he looked at me, and called out to me. "Don't go. Kitt, don't go. It won't help." I ignored him, and went across the hallway and into the calling old lady's room.

"Do you need help?"

"Mary?"

"No, I'm not Mary."

"Help me, Mary."

"I'm not Mary. What help do you need?"

"Mary, help me!"

I clued in and left. Hustling back into the room, I tried to avoid Kris' gaze.

"I told you."

"Yes, you did."

"There's always one."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

He then went on to tell me about how each and every time he was in the hospital (and that number was more than two), some person was calling out. If it wasn't "Mary!" it was "Help me!" or "Betty!" or "Charlie!"

Each time after that, when we were in the hospital overnight, we'd hear the lone caller serenading us, and we'd laugh about there always being one.

Today, in one of the sessions, one person kept asking questions that were well below the technical level of the intended audience of the session. The questions were starting to irritate other participants, with the exception of one other person, who joined the session hijacking attempt. The two of them went off on a theme editing tangent that clearly indicated their lack of Drupal experience, much less theming experience.

Yes, I agree that there needs to be a balance between helping new users and advanced users, developers and themers. But, I was frustrated by the first person asking questions (well, the same question in fourteen different ways, even though it was previously answered thirteen times).

I leaned over to Mike, "There's always one."

He replied back, "But usually two."