I'm Dreaming Of a White...Lambie

Can I just say, WOW, it's wonderful outside today!?

I'm sitting in my Chicagoland Pad, windows wide open, in a tank top and shorts, and I'm NOT freezing. This is newsworthy in itself! I had a dinner meeting tonight and *really* fought the temptation to blow off the meeting and go run outside in the evening. As I was driving to my meeting, my car said it was 77. 77 degrees...in Chicago...on March 31. So THIS must be what it feels like to work in Florida!

I'm still a little bit froggy (and a little bit rock and roll), but I managed to croak my way through 12 straight hours of meetings today. I had 14 hours of meetings on Monday, 12 yesterday, and 12 today. Tomorrow is Leadership Training at St. Rowlf's and then I'm finally heading home. Yes, that'll be me tomorrow afternoon, screaming down the highway, with all windows down and sunroof open, blaring some Bob Marley song from my stereo. I have truly earned my Good Friday holiday. I forgot that, as a Muppet Corporate employee, I still have to take Good Friday off of work. Fine. Twist my arm.

I'm just ready for the Lamb Cake on Easter Sunday.

So since I work in a land of conservative Catholic bliss, the rage this week has been the saga of the Lamb Cake. My office is next to Nurse Jackie's...a few of us were standing there (procrastinating) and I was telling a story about how my mom, SkyBlue, always makes a bunch (a herd?) of lamb cakes at Easter. She has a whole scientific process for ensured success of the lambs. Nurse Jackie piped up that she has never made a lamb cake but wanted to give it a whirl. Sister Lourdes, observing the conversation from afar, quickly turned on her heel and left Administration.

She does that a lot, so no one thought much of it.

Ten minutes later, she returned with a 30-pound cast iron mould of a lamb. (No one knows where this came from, but I hope there isn't a cemetery of animal moulds in a forgotten hospital cabinet. Just think of what Stephen King would do with that!) Nurse Jackie, weirdly excited by this prospect, proclaimed she now needed the perfect lamb cake recipe. So I get my mom on the phone and she repeated the whole scientific cake-baking process to everyone! Now there's a bet going on (y'know, like the good Catholics we are, we bet on religious-themed items) as to which part of the lamb's anatomy will get broken off Nurse Jackie's first lamb cake.

So when we're not worrying about corporate compliance, healthcare reform, state politics, staffing productivity, physician relations, and general hospital business, we're plotting our baking adventures.