Wild Weekend

I normally don't go a week in between posts unless there is really nothing going on. This time however, there is too much going on. It all started last Monday when my wife, who hadn't been feeling all that good for the past couple of weeks, spent the better part of 9 hours at the hospital having numerous tests run and getting fussed at by an old retired Navy doctor for not taking better care of herself. Granted, my wife has lost 80 pounds over the past 10 months (and she's done it naturally, with no drugs, surgery, or anything else - just diet and lots of hard work at the gym). It seems the diet part caught up with her and the doctor decided she needed to work with a nutrionist to get things worked out. We also found that she had gall stones, which had been causing a lot of her problems. Her surgeon told her on Thursday she had 14 stones! He said that he didn't know when he'd be able to schedule the surgery, but he'd be on call at the hospital all weekend (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Friday she had a serious gall bladder attack, so off to the hospital, spent the night, and had the surgery yesterday at 8 a.m. She was released by 4 p.m. and I brought her home. She is turning out to be an impatient patient. She won't just sit still and rest, she wants to get up and do stuff around the house, so its been a bit of a battle. Eventually she wore herself out and had to lay down.

As I was on my way to the hospital Friday, my mother called and told me that she was moving my father into an assisted living facility. I knew this was coming soon, but geez, what timing. Dad has Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. My mom, though in fairly good health (and ten years younger than Dad), is a small person. She's too frail and weak to take care of him. I'm relieved that he's in the nicest facility in town, but he's not real happy about it. He understands why he has to be there, but he still doesn't like it. My brother, who absolutely hates nursing homes and the like, even said he was impressed with the facility. So hopefully everything is going to work out well for all of us. Mom lives in the country, about a 15 minute drive from town. My brother and I would like for her to sell the house and move into town, closer to Dad and the two of us, but she's planning on staying at the house. I know there's some work to be done there before she can sell it, but hopefully within a year or so she'll be ready for a change too.

As always, the work schedule is extremely busy, but its mostly fun. I am having a great time with work right now, which makes all the other craziness in my life seem poorly timed. But, there's a time for everything I suppose and maybe this weekend's developments were meant to make me see that as much fun as I'm having at work, there are other things I need to be tending to as well.

Our living history group is doing our annual weekend at the Museum of the Confederacy next weekend. On Friday I will be heading up early and visiting Pamplin Park for the first time. I am looking forward to this little mini-vacation much more now than I was before. And of course, it will provide more good blog material!