Insomnia Fairy paid another visit about 3:00 this morning.

Awoke out of what I thought was a sound sleep, and not from an anxiety dream so far as I can remember. Just awake and thirsty and groggy. Stumbled to the loo, more on general principles than anything else. Drank half a mug of smoothie and am finishing that batch off as we speak. Went back to bed and lay there doggedly. Waves of sleepiness came and went until they finally became strong enough to wash over me.

Now that I'm awake (more or less), I'm wondering if I've absorbed other people's anxieties. It wouldn't be the first time. SemperFi is taking his mom on a two week bucket list trip (her bucket, not his) beginning next week. My other attorney's last day is tomorrow. As for myself, I have the usual assortment of nigglings on my mind: I've covered the bills, but will there be enough fun money if I want to hit Bueno the night before payday? And then there are work concerns. Will I get one of the two new attorneys who will be coming to the office shortly? Will I get half of the docket of an attorney who is already working in our office? If so, I hope it's not one whom I like very much as a human being, but who has been a factor in the last three secretaries who left our office. With the frustrations I have felt since taking on half of the docket of the attorney who is leaving (who has become a dear friend but has one quirk that made my workflow unnecessarily complicated), retirement has been looking more and more attractive.

I want to do a good job for as long as I can. My hope is to have the mortgage paid off in five more years (instead of 13 more years) and then rebuild my 401K from the depredations of the past two years. I like my job. Most days. I'm good at my job. Most days. I look forward to going to work. Most days.

When I was at my sister's last month and remarked that I used to be afraid that I would go nuts during retirement, and that I used to dread the idea, but that now it was looking like something that might actually be fun, she replied, "Oh, you will do just fine during retirement!" It was good to get a second opinion from someone whose opinion I trust.

In other news, Firstborn handed me a friend's sweater a couple of months ago and asked if I thought I could fix a seam that had come apart. Turns out that I could. It was crocheted together, and that thread was unbroken, so it was a simple matter of picking up the loops that stuck up along one edge, and a not so simple matter of making sure that I distributed them evenly along the other edge. Took a bit of trial and error before I got that right, but her sweater is fixed and neatly folded and bagged and waiting by the front door with the penultimate quilt block, for when we get together at the quilt shop on the 5th.

And the baby sock is coming along. The yarn had gotten chomped in several places since I bought it, even though I'd kept it in a plastic drawer, so there was some ripping and spit-splicing. Yes. I can spit-splice superwash merino. (If I were going to have a headstone, you could put that there, right below the dates on either side of the dash.) Heel flap has been frogged and re-knit, and I'm going to simply weave in ends on the cuff "owie" as I did not want to frog back that far. Today I'll turn the heel, pick up stitches and gallop away toward the toe.

The fabric for this month's installment of the medallion quilt got prewashed Tuesday night. Last night I pressed it. It's hanging out on the ironing board, and most likely tonight I will start cutting out the pieces. There are only five pieces of fabric this time, but I read the instructions, and I will finally get to put together and add another border. Firstborn looks at the sample quilt every time we're in the shop and says variations on the theme of "It's lovely, and no way would I want to sew all those tiny pieces together." If I had to do it all at once, neither would I. But broken up into monthly installments, I haven't found it onerous.

OK. Semi-icky smoothie is down the hatch. Frugality has been satisfied, even if I'm still wrangling bits of pomegranate seed. Time to throw together lunch and then sluice off.