Whew!

Project completed – big sigh of relief!

Been frantically trying to wrap up a deadline before the momentous occasion of Newt’s third birthday week. Everything was going fantastically, even better than anticipated. Was on schedule to finish well ahead of the deadline, and enjoy a leisurely birthday celebration with Newt and Cat Daddy on Tuesday.

And then Murphy’s Law entered with a vengeance. Everything that could have gone wrong – did. Laid waste to the plan, the backup plan, and even wreaked havoc upon the backup to the backup to the backup plan. It was a total, unmitigated nightmare of epic proportions!

I was working round the clock, trying to regain some semblance of control, and all the while, Newt was right here with me. He’s been such a little trooper. We’ve talked before about how my little spotted Schnookums insists on being right by my side at all times – even during periods of high stress (such as deadline wraps). I truly believe that his episodes can be triggered / exacerbated by stress, so we are always really careful to maintain as stress-free an environment as possible. We’re successful, most of the time.

And then, there’s deadline time.

It’s one thing for me to have to miss meals and go without sleep while working; it’s quite another story for Newt. In spite of the chaos surrounding the deadline challenges, we managed to keep his food and meds on schedule; but I was really worried that the back-to-back all-nighters were going to trigger him, as they did the last time.

Nope, not this time!  Either Newt is getting smarter in his “old age” (ha ha) or mummy’s bizarre schedule is not as interesting to him as it used to be.

He actually snoozed here beside me in his “Annex Box to the Annex Box to the Annex Box” (a.k.a. AB3). He did get a little manic at one point, and was leaping about and chasing the Dog around the house. Am pretty sure it was normal play behavior for him, but was holding my breath, desperately hoping that I wouldn’t have an ER visit to deal with, on top of everything else that had gone wrong with the project.

He got a lovely card from one of his friends in England, and numerous electronic birthday greetings from his friends all around the world. The Slasher Queen even deigned to permit him to sleep in her extra special, furry nest. Both of them took their duties as Quality Control Analysts quite seriously.

The deadline was met, the client was very pleased with the end result; and the Newt and I settled in for a long overdue nap.

Life is good.