*whew*

I'm really feeling fatigued today, but that's most likely because I was up until 1AM following the returns in the presidential election.

I am so relieved that Kerry conceded today. It was as if a weight was literally lifted from my shoulders, and it allowed me to switch gears completely into "birthday mode".

I baked white cake and astonishing chocolate cake for DD, and will assemble them into a Barbie cake tomorrow. When I got out the presents to wrap them after tucking all the kids in tonight, I noticed I had the wrong Barbie! The Princess and the Pauper must match, otherwise it (the duet) doesn't work right, so since Mom is here, I dashed off to Toys-R-Us to do the exchange. That worked well. Got home, wrapped up everything, unpacked all the boxes that had come and stacked all DD's presents by the kitchen table, where they will taunt her all day until she can open them after supper when we are all around to see!

I also put up the new wall rack, using the same drywall anchors from the old one as they were still in place, and the entire process took about 10 minutes. Taking the rack out of the packaging was the most challenging aspect of that task. Now we have some overflow space for all the kids' jillion computer games.

I can feel my brain slowing down, it seems... maybe it's just today, because I am so tired and had so much to do, I was on my feet all day! I am (as usual) about to drop.

In the AM: pickup the doughnuts and balloons for DD's class (no cupcakes for her!), drop them off, and then dash over for my bloodtest; come home and take DS2 to Atrium, then decorate DD's cake. The plan is to take DD out for lunch, still haven't decided on what supper will be (it really is her choice)...

I am doing well with the LID, but it's distracting to me to have watch every single thing I eat. I have never been this disciplined before, ever, but I know how important this is, so I am trying. I caught myself mindlessly about to lick salted butter off my fingers this evening after buttering some bread for the kids -- can't do that! This is hard. I have never eaten so cleanly in my entire life! I made an awesome pear pancake yesterday for breakfast and finished it off today, it was really good. It helped today to have something ready for quick breakfast. Of course, I'm not prepared for tomorrow's breakfast whatsoever, even though I spent the entire day baking, it seems. I may just have toast and finish off some of that Italian bread I bought to have with dinner last night -- the family devoured 3/4s of it, which was not the idea (it was supposed to be for me to have a slice now & then, as it has no bad stuff for me in it --) ah well, there is certainly enough for me to have breakfast, although I don't know if I'll be up to stirring the new unsalted peanut butter in the morning. This is all too weird.

Day 2 without any dairy whatsoever, and I am a hurting puppy on that score. I actually had a cup of tea with coconut milk and it was all right. Certainly drinkable. It would probably be better with a more flavorful tea, like jasmine... I don't know. Why does it always seem like you want exactly what you can't have? Hopefully it will be only a couple of weeks and then I can eat normally again. As it is, there's a good chance I will lose weight eating this way because it's hard for me to take in enough calories. Eeesh.

Well, must to bed as I have to be up early and be highly functional shortly thereafter, as opposed to my usual morning slug routine.