In Town

Sorry I've been so busy. I have to rush off to take my mom to the grocery store but here's a quick update: There were a few more setbacks for my Dad. Small problems like tubes coming off. But my Dad is finally home. He's at a new place in town and sleeping a lot. I came home before him and blew a tire on the way home and the troopers helped me, but all is well now.

Tip of the day: If you are going to drive long distances, bring some flares. A car by the side of the road with it's hazard blinkers on doesn't make traffic get out of the right lane, flares DO.

Whoo Hoo!!

(If all goes well) I will be going to Pittsburgh in the morning to help my stepmom make sure my Dad gets home! He is supposed to set out by ambulance and we will follow. Thank you for your prayers!

Oh Nine in History

Yay America, Go Barack, Whoo!

My Dad was supposed to come home tomorrow. Just found out he is not. He has an infection from the surgery that he had to have to replace his little modern feeding tube with a big one before he could come home to a brand new state of the art facility because they think Pittsburgh is all that and Toledo is not. Please get home.

Eight out of Ten

My body conspired to help me keep my number theme. I was going to drop the "Six, Seven..." theme from the post titles because what's the point if it's not accidental?

Eight is the answer to the question "On a scale of one to ten, how much does your ear hurt?" Friday night I started getting chills and by Saturday morning it killed me to swallow, my ear hurt so bad. So the doctor at the urgent care center told me I had a bad inner ear infection. It kept me in bed all weekend.

No more news about my Dad yet.

Note to self: Make a list for your peeps of all the urgent care centers that accept our insurance.

Seven Years of Kevin Costner

We watched 2 movies: "Mirrors" and "Swing Vote".

"Swing Vote" was fine. Kevin Costner really knows how to *Star* in a movie. I want to go back and view his "normal" movies like "Bull Durham" and "Tin Cup" and "Message in a Bottle" and see if he actually drove those around like a vehicle too. In "Swing Vote", the girl actress gets a lot of screen time, so that makes it more even if you don't take into account the subject of the movie. "Swing Vote" contains two or three truly bizarre political commercials.

"Mirrors" had 2 scenes that relied too heavily on the actor yelling to be scary. Possibly whoever was in charge of quality was passive-aggressive with Keifer Sutherland. (I was able to sit through the whole thing, so it may not be a very scary movie.)

If you like Sci-Fi, "Mirrormask" was pretty trippy. Sort of animated Alice in Wonderland kind of thing.

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Funniest thing I said "today": When I do sudoku, I put a smiley face if I solve it and a sad face if I mess it up. Last night, before I was done I said "I'm going to make a smiley face, just for myself." Gave my boys giggle fits, because they love a good non sequitur. : ) Ha.

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Your Smiling Face" and "Complicated"

Six Degrees of Cold

Brrr! Hope you are staying warm! I've been going to bed before Jeopardy for a few days. At least it's cozy.

Here is the news and I am keeping my fingers crossed. My Dad is off the ventilator and they are getting him ready to send back to Toledo at the beginning of next week.

Okay Mr. Mix

Here is a cover song playlist I am finally done making. I "dis-embedded" it and just made it a link.

What Do You Get

I've got a ton to do at work, because of all my time off. I had a tough time trying to concentrate on a big task and do all the little things and pass things back and forth. Aw, heck more later. Guess where I've got to go now! : )

Back

We are back home, back to work, back to school. I am so glad we went to see my dad. I hope they can get rid of his pneumonia and wean him off his machines. He knew we were there. He wanted to hear CNN on the TV and he wanted me to read his book. I got him, "The Audacity of Hope". I thought he'd get a kick out that. I thought things would be different than they are now.

Yesterday I heard the Nat King/Natalie Cole version of "Unforgettable" on the radio. I'm glad I wasn't driving. Back when I got married this was a (relatively) new song. It was in the DJ song book but not in the list of Father/Bride dance songs so I had to write it in. I guess we have a song you'll actually hear sometimes. Aw geez, this reminds me, the stupid DJ played "Could I Have This Dance For the Rest of My Life" for the Groom/Maid of Honor dance. Stupid DJ, not paying attention, man was I mad at him. I'm sure he's better now, or hopefully, not DJ'ing.

Ups and Downs

Here I am in Pittsburgh with my kids having come to see my Dad. I can't sleep. I was dreaming about traffic, feeling like I'm flying, going up and down hills. And I'm too sad and don't want to be alone. We watched New Year's Eve on ABC Family or Disney mostly America's Funniest Home Videos. My kids thought it was a travesty how the winner didn't have any kids to bring on the prize: visits to all the Disney parks around the world. We switched over to Fox to watch the ball drop. But we swear we didn't actually see it drop, we think somebody dropped the ball. We don't know. Everybody kissed. I called my husband but he must have been asleep.

We got to see my Dad and we got to see Ruthann and we got to talk to the doctor, one of them, not the main doctor but the staff in charge I guess.

He didn't look horrible but it wasn't great. He had circles around his eyes, brown eyelids. He wasn't conscious but he did move his head around when we came in and when we left. I couldn't think of what to say, except like Dad I'm here and about the weather on the road. Eric was something: we're glad you're not dead, we're mad at them for getting you sick.

What happened was my dad got released on Christmas Eve but he needed arrangements to come to a care facility here and also transport home. So I was going to come out Christmas weekend but since he was supposed to be home Monday or Tuesday, I cancelled that. But the insurance company was closed for Christmas and they didn't make the arrangements to get him out of here. And then over the weekend he got pneumonia and he's been worse every day since.

This doctor we spoke to was pretty grim, but Ruthann assures me that he's always like that and the one in the morning is much more positive.