Grateful thanks and an update

Megan and dogs

 My radio silence is apparently noticeable because I have received many inquires and lots of good wishes. And I am profoundly grateful. So here's an update: I am in the hospital having too many tests. So far results are headed in the right direction--looking better each day. I feel much better, although a bit sluggish. And food has no appeal--I am trying to make myself eat. I will be here several more days.

My kids have been tremendous. Jordan took me to the ER per doctor's orders Friday and stayed with me until evening. I am allowed one visitor per 24 hours so Megan and Jamie have been alternating staying with me and are godsends.

Sophie meanwhile is well cared for. They tell me she misses me but I think she may be getting such extra attention she's reveling in it.

Again, my thanks. I hope to be back to blogging about cheerful daily events sometime soon. Until then, God bless!

An Almost Perfect Day

Not too long ago, I was a guest on a blog where one of the questions asked me to describe my perfect day. I did, and today was almost that perfect day. It was cloudy but no rain, warm but not oppressive--the kind of day that makes me content to stay in. And that's what I did--fiddled with email, Facebook, etc., and then did my yoga. Completed a questionnaire for yet another guest blog, and began reading a book for review. Had an early lunch--half a BLT that was delicious. My mom taught me to be generous with mayonnaise and to pepper the tomato--no salt because the bacon is salty. It was so good I wished I'd made a whole sandwich, but I'm trying to watch my caloric intake.
An early and nice nap, and then I picked up Jacob. The only homework he had was to practice his spelling--not his best day but I hold out hope that tomorrow will be better.
This evening, I had supper with neighbors at the Old Neighborhood Grill. I always look forward to Tuesday night because the neighbors gather and it's meatloaf night. I meant to eat half the meatloaf and bring the other half home for a sandwich, but I ate the whole thing and bought a separate plain slice to bring home. Two sandwiches!
My day was marred by the hospitalization of my oldest son. He went in for a diagnostic procedure this morning and ended up with complications of that and his chronic disease that will probably keep him in the hospital for three days. He is not a happy camper, but he finally knows to take care of his health and follow doctor's orders--I think it took the first forty years of his life for him to learn that. Naturally I'm worried, and so are his siblings, but I'm assured he's in good hands--Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston--and his wife sounds upbeat, saying he's getting the best of care. This afternoon Jordan and I had worry hour instead of happy hour but we had some wine and kind of mulled things over. She said she wished we could go to Houston, an idea my brother nixed saying, "What would you do?" My reply, "Worry there instead of here." He said, "You got it, and you'd be more work for Lisa." So I'm at home worrying.
Otherwise though it was my perfect day--at home working and doing my yoga, early lunch, nap, afternoon with Jacob, and dinner out with friends. Who could ask for a better life?

Chaos

My house is quiet right now, althugh a certain dog tension lingers in the air. I have as guests four extra adults, four extra children (plus Jacob), and two extra dogs. My house is honestly not that big. The dogs are the big problem: Megan's dog, mostly mini poo, is docile, loving and goes with the flow. Sophie is out of her mind with excitement over people and dogs, wants to play with everyone and jump all over them (Megan made the mistake of sitting on the floor and was floored by Sophie jumping on her--I explained that if you're on the floor, you're fair game). Colin's new dog, Gracie (Sofia Grace when she's in trouble) is the big problem. A large German shepherd mix that had a litter when she was put in the shelter, growled, snapped and acted like she wanted to eat Sophie alive; pretty soon she decided Eddie was just as bad. So now, oh peace, she is crated, Sophie is fed and outside, and Eddie is wandering around.
Everyone has gone to the rodeo, and I pray it's a long one, so I can do some of the stuff I had in mind to do tonight, like write my thousand words and make a meatloaf to stick in the freezer. When they are here, much as I love them, they all talk at once, and I have to either yell over them to announce I have something to say or corner the one I need to talk to. But we had a few pleasant, fairly quiet moments in front of the fireplace.
I had all kinds of sandwich makings so they could snack--they ate chips and salsa, and a little bit of cheese ball. Only Colin ate a sandwich, so I foresee a lot of lunch meat in my future. The two grown girls, after dressing their children warmly, left for the rodeo  in clothes that were more cowgirl glitzy than warm--and it's cold tonight.
In spite of all that, I am of course delighted to have them home, sorry my youngest son and his family will only be here for the day tomorrow, heartbroken for Jordan who is still in bed with the flu and now feeling well enough to be bored out of her gourd. They are all lovely adults, as glad to see me as I am to see them, and the chldren are a delight. My oldest grandson is the one who greets me with big kisses, but he's also the one who cannot keep his hands off things--the pens on my desk would make great projectiles (I didn't ask what he intended to project), the paper clips fascinate him, an empty decorative jar has to be opened and closed several times. When I explained that my desk is strictly off limits, he said, "But there are so many interesting things with so many possibilities." I'm used to Jacob who sees a pen as something that requires a blank piece of paper (usually a discarded piece with typing on the other side). Tomorrow my two oldest granddaughters will arrive but for now Morgan is the only girl--she does a credible job of holding her own. They all want to be in and out of doors, and no amount of warning them Sophie will bolt does any good so now I look the doors and hide the keys. Sort of like a fortress.
No doubt, Jacob will want to spend the night with his cousins, and no doubt, since we're short on sleeping space, he'll end up in my bed. But I'll do that just to have as much of my family as possible under my roof. It's a delightful feeling to know when I go to sleep my children and grandchildren are nearby.
I confess in a weak moment I called Jordan and offered to trade her sickbed for my place, but I didn't really mean it. And she knew it. She's really tired of watching old movies.

Up and Down

I've been up and down in the last couple of days. In the wee hours of Monday morning, a nasty stomach virus attacked me. I thought it was something I'd eaten, though I couldn't think what, and once I got it out of my system I'd be fine. So I charged off to work at 9:30--slept a bit late since I'd missed a lot of sleep. And I slunk home about 11:30, realizing from the way I felt it was a virus, not food poisoning. Spent the rest of the day going back to bed and wondering what in the world my stomach could keep down (oatmeal was the answer). Today I'm a much improved person, feeling almost like myself. Went to sleep at 9 last night, and it was so wonderful I may do it again tonight!
But today I was a bit up. I faced a difficult meeting with a dissatisfied author. Long story short, he's someone I've worked with before and always found difficult, and when I rejected his latest manuscript, he attributed it to an old grudge on my part and wanted to know the "process." I realized that if I didn't take charge of the meeting from the get-go, I'd lost. So I did just that. And he sat silently and listened until I was through. I do confess that when he began re-raising the same arguments, I kept interrupting--I have an irritating habit of thinking what I have to say is so important that I have to jump in. "Let me finish," he'd plead, and I'd sit back impatiently. I did make a huge concession--I'll send it out to a reader--and when he kept pushing about why didn't I send it to two readers initially, I finally asked, "Are you a historian? A good one?" His eyes went all around the room, finally landed on me, and he said, "Yeah, I guess." "Good," I said, "let me be the publisher." After a minute he looked a me and said, "Touche!" Susan, who was in the meeting, complimented me about the whole thing later. We'll see . It may not work out as I think but I'm willing to go with what happens. Does give one a boost. Makes up for the fact that I missed a 3:30 meeting because I was mixed up about where it was; lost my i.d. card and by chance found it in a book I'd just returned to the library; checked out a mystery from the current reading section, got it home, and realized I'd already read it. Glad I had one success today in the face of those minor irritations!

What happens when you let trivia get you down

It's been a day of exasperating trivia. It really began last night when I found a dead rat in the backyard. I thought about it--for maybe half a minute--and decided to wimp out as a female and call my neighbor. He, bless him, rushed right over, and I armed him with a plastic bag and a stick. But as he approached the rat, he said, "I hate doing this." Instead of remorse at making him do something he hates, I felt a bit of relief--I mean, if he hates it, how does he think I felt? I asked him what finding it meant, and he said, "Scooby got it." I said, "Well, he's not interested in it any more," and he replied, "It's not a toy anymore." So the dead rat went into my garbage and, thank goodness, out of my mind.
Also yesterday I noticed that the airbag light on my dash was on--I didn't remember that it always did that, but I'm probably not really observant about such things. Today I looked in the owner's manual, and it said that should be checked immediately. So I called to see if something terrible was going to happen if I didn't rush right in--I really need my car tomorrow. They said no, it was just that the airbag wouldn't deploy. OK, I know they're safety devices, but the idea of one bursting in my face has always been slightly terrifying. So I'll drive tomorrow and I have an appointment early Wed. to drop the car off. It may be the result of that woman backing into me in her steamship "old lady's car."
Then I came home this afternoon to a letter telling me my prescription renewal was not being filled because I was not eligible for insurance. What? I've had the same insurance for years. It took an hour of waiting on the phone--I wish I had speaker phone at home as I do at work--to finally learn that the two prescription renewals are being processed, but I'm still not eligible--go figure. After calls to the customer service department and the TCU HR I discovered that "there's a glitch in the system." They're figuring it out, though I will say the TCU person was most helpful and inquired if I needed a prescription or anything immediately.
But all of these minor annoyances fade in the face of news I got this morning. Larry, my former boss, called to tell me that Andy Miracle, a mutual friend, had a catastrophic stroke on Friday and was not expected to live. I've known Andy since at least our kids were in middle school and maybe beyond, and the kids and I share many good memories of him and his wife. Andy had another catastrophic stroke about three years ago but he beat the doctors' odds and survived, albeit in a wheelchair with limited motion on his left side. They moved several times since then, landing back in Fort Worth for a while, and we lunched, shared memories, talked about the future. Then they went back to Santa Fe where, Andy said, his heart lives. They settled in a wondereful retirement comunity--Tina was taking tap dance, going rafting, doing all kinds of things (with severely limited vision) and Andy was in therapy that made him sure he would walk again, ride his bicycle--and, yes, downhill ski (my kids loved skiing with him and spent long days on the slopes). They were so happy, and life seemed on such an upward swing, that you want to say, forgive the language, that sometimes life sucks. I've spent the day thinking of images of Andy--the bookstore we once decided to open in Santa Fe, the way he'd walk through the halls of TCU with his laugh booming so that you knew without a doubt who was out there, the night we all ate sushi in Santa Fe and I was having such fun that my kids were angry because they didn't think I'd ever go home, his determiantion to write again, maybe even a novel. And Tina, herself disabled, who really became the world's best caretaker. I remember clearly one party at my house when Jamie had to take Andy's wheelchair down the steps and Andy kept saying, "Jamie, I'm so sorry." Jamie told him not to be, but Tina was right there with a firm, "That's right, Miracle, feel sorry for yourself." I harbor a secret small hope that Andy will beat the odds again, but then I know the odds are even greater that he would not have the degree of freedom he's had even in his wheelchair with limited motion--and he wouldn't want that. My kids and I are sad tonight for friends we love and of whom we have special memories. Yeah, sometimes life isn't one bit fair.