I’ve Returned

Like, just a few minutes ago.  I am tired and emotionally worn out. 
Grandma was doing great when I left today.  I’m going to be totally honest here–that’s not the news I thought I’d be sharing today.  I wasn’t even sure I’d be back already today.
So don’t think I’m the girl who cried wolf.  Things were really bad on Friday.  They were slightly better but still pretty disconcerting when I arrived on Saturday.  It wasn’t really until yesterday that we all felt some seriously strong rays of hope shining on our little family.  (and my little grandma–4′10″ and 82 lbs!  All the nurses remarked upon how tiny and cute she is)  Last night all the monitors and i.v.’s came off and she moved out of the Cardiac Care Unit and into a regular hospital room. It is a small miracle that my tiny, stubborn grandma has survived a heart attack, pneumonia, and the beginnings of kidney failure all in one week at the age of 90.  I’m even more amazed the woman STILL has not gone entirely gray!
It was so good and so important to be home with my folks. 
I know I’m not myself right now, so forgive me if I’m hiding out, or seeming a bit emotionally sensitive, or just acclimate slowly again to the interwebs.  More to come.  It’s good to rest on  my bed and pet my kitties for a bit.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your warm thoughts and safe wishes!!
ETA:  Forgot to mention that I got a call from my bank an hour before I left on Saturday to let me know there had been fraudulent activity on my debit card.  It’s all handled now, but man, a couple days of dealing with that was NOT what I needed under the circumstances! :p

Update

A lot of you know this already, but I booked a flight for tomorrow around noon to fly out to Ohio. My grandma’s kidneys are failing due to the medicine they put her on to keep her heart working. So, it’s getting hard to care for both. All I know is I was told to book a flight, and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.
Thanks again for all your thoughts–and for all the things my local friends and sweeties have offered to help me out. It means a lot.
I’ll check in when I can…

Let Us Learn From This Man

The other day, I had some things to do downtown. When I was done I was STARVING so I stopped at Potbelly to pick up a turkey on wheat (no cheese).
I placed my order and shuffled on down to the “dressing” station where a man was waiting for his Wreck. (that’s the actual name of the sandwich for those of you not familiar with Potbelly) He said he wanted evertyhing except mayo on his sandwich. I don’t know if the dressings lady was really tired or what, but she looked at him like a headlight-struck deer. He repeated his order–everything except mayo.
And the first thing she did was put mayo on his sandwich. (for those who might ask, she spoke perfect English so there was no language barrier, just a little mis-step in the eletrical wiring, methinks) The man sighed, I chuckled, and he said, “No, I said everything EXCEPT mayo.” Again, with the staring like a deer. And she just looked at the sandwich bewildered.
This is where I think we all could learn from this guy. I would have gone into fits at this point, about how I am allergic to mayo and how hard was my order to understand?? And so on and so forth. And in a lot of ways, I think I would have been justified. But the man very calmly just said, “Please scrape it off and go on with the other ingredients.” She went to order him a new sandwich and he insisted she not waste food like that, just please scrape the mayo off and continue with the other ingredients.
So she did.
And then she started asking him if he wanted every single ingredient available. Tomatoes? Yes, he replied calmly. Onion? Yes, calmly. Pickles? Yes. And so on through the whole list–the list of everything he had specified he wanted on his sandwich, save for mayo.
I was rolling my eyes and chuckling a little bit but the guy was perfectly still and subdued. He thanked her and paid for his sandwich without incident.
That, my friends, is a very zen man I would like to live like more often.

Go Go Go Go GO!

I feel like that’s been my mantra the last couple days…*sigh*
But nevermind that, what I mean is GO check out Ms. Guth’s super-duper contest! Oh, it is fabulously fun!

ETA: The latest updates are that Grandma continues to do better and better. She is breathing much better, and improving daily. Thanks for your thoughts!

Energy!

Just a little update…I’m on call with my family for the time being. In other words, they will let me know in the coming days if I need to fly now or if I can wait a week or two. Grandma is not doing well, but she’s also a fighter. I get a healthy dose of stubborn from both sides of the family! I don’t know what else to say so…
On the brighter side, I have had SO MUCH energy this week!! It’s such an amazing and nice change of pace. Late last week I cut my migraine medicine in half because I’d been having tremendous fatigue that I think was being caused by it. The half dose is still working, and I can function again. My naps have been cut by about a third! Tee hee. Monday night I went to yoga*, last night I did a weight routine and then spent about 2 hours helping E. clean his old apartment. Seriously, I haven’t felt like this in 2 months. And it’s lasted more than 2 days, so I’m feeling pretty confident…

*Monday’s yoga class was so wonderful, I really need to start incorporating yoga back into my regular exercise routine. During final relaxation, in the complete stillness of the room, I heard two individuals snoring. Ha! Suffice to say when class ends at 9 and people are reasonably relaxed, naps may ensue.

Feelin’ Bad

When I was 18 years old, I moved as far across the state as possible to go to college. It wasn’t anything personal to my family, I just had a rather unpleasant high school experience in a very small town and wanted to get as far away as possible. Well, that and the fact that the school I fell in love with at first sight (Miami University) just happened to be at the opposite corner of the state.
I spent a year in Cincinnati, and then moved two states away to Chicago. As much as I’d love to pack up and go to California, this is about as far as I feel comfortable being away from my family. It’s still driving distance, and a reasonably priced flight to and from Ohio. Life here has been wonderful and has afforded me so many opportunities I would never have had if I had stayed in Ohio. I wouldn’t have met the great friends I have here and I wouldn’t have met E.
Right now, though, I am feeling kind of bad about being more than an hour away. My grandma, who just turned 90, is in the hospital. She had a heart attack and also has pneumonia. My dad is stressed out enough from having just moved her into a nursing home and moving my grandpa into a new apartment. I want to be there right now, but I can’t, and in fact my mom suggested I hold off until after the 30th (when my grandpa moves) to come visit.
I’ve known for a long time that eventually the day is going to come when I need to take that emergency flight home. This isn’t THAT emergency trip. And I hope there won’t be many of them.
I know it is the normal order of things, and in this day and age people move much farther from their families than I have chosen to. Staying in Ohio would have never gotten me to where I am in my life now. But just for today, I am feeling bad being here in Chicago.

Batman, Birthdays, and Bedroom Sets

• E. and I went to see The Dark Knight early in the day yesterday.  We tried to go see it Saturday night, but unsurprisingly it was sold out, so we bought tickets for an early Sunday show instead.  It was, also unsurprisingly, amazing.  But HEAVY.  Man, do NOT see this movie if you are depressed about anything in your life right now–it is far, far heavier than Batman Begins.  Also?  The token idiot-b*&%# with three kids was sitting next to us.  It didn’t bother me that the kids were fidgety, they were obviously far too little to be entertained for that long.  It certainly wasn’t their fault that Mom is an idiot.  What bothered me IMMENSELY is that TDK is NOT a movie for children.  It should have had an R rating, and I’m mad it didn’t because I know it was to boost ticket sales to those under 17.  Nevertheless, when your 4-5 year old has her face buried in her teddy it’s time to leave.  That borders heavily on child abuse in my opinion.  Poor little thing, *I* nearly had nightmares from some of the scenes!  Moving on, my blood pressure is starting to rise again…
• Friday night I went and sang some karaoke to celebrate S.’s birthday.  I’m not a karaoke kind of girl usually, but we went to Lincoln Karaoke which is just…indescribably hilarious and fun. The best part is you’re in your own private suite instead of on stage, so you can act as completely asinine as you want and not feel at all self conscious about that or your singing.  Good times.
• E. moved into his new place this weekend and it is GORGEOUS.  I killed my calves hauling groceries and sundries up and down four flights of stairs most of the weekend.  But they hurt GOOD.  Anyway, I was inspired to finally make something of my bedroom.  I have a mismatched bookcase, an old dresser, no bed frame (I’m serious, I’ve slept on a matress & box springs on the floor for awhile now) and a totally functionless nightstand.  But soon I will have this bed (in black/brown) and matching set of 2 drawers that I plan to use as a bedside table.  Yay!  I may still trade up on the dresser, I’m not sure.  I usually like to save furniture overhauls for moving time so that I don’t have to move furniture unnecessarily.  But the bedroom situation was bad, and I really needed more practical space.  My hope of hopes is that this will inspire me to keep my room neat but…eh, we’ll see about that.  At least I’ll have a bed off the floor to shove things under!  Heh.

One More Request….

I’m demanding of you readers today, aren’t I? Speaking of counting our blessings and hugging our friends tight…
Please wish Stephanie a happy birthday if you see her on the street!! Her birthday is Sunday, but she will be on her way to Florida so she won’t be reading on her actual birthday proper, or any time near it.
Lucky girl. I almost called her a nasty word just now.
She is an awesome friend that I have known for so long now, I’ve stopped counting. We were roomies for our first few years in Chicago. People are always surprised when I say I am still good friends with a former roommate, which is funny. I know where they are coming from but I can’t imagine NOT being friends with her!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STEPHANIE! This year is going to be a great one for you!

But Usually…I Care

A lot.
Two bloggers I read are going through some horrific stuff. Completely different people, completely different stuff. Baggage had a Sex and the City – sized heartbreak. Lisa is fighting a very nasty cancer. I don’t know them, never met them in person, and only started reading Lisa in the past couple months. But my heart breaks for both of them, and I sit here looking at my monitor wishing I could do something other than leave another little comment.
I can’t afford to buy gifts or send money to every person I’d like to help. My “give” fund is already out of whack because I set up my priorities on donations and someone always pulls on my heart strings enough for me to give to something I hadn’t planned on. So all I have for them at this point are thoughts and prayers.
But, more than that, they have given ME something. And that is a quiet reflection on how good my life is. How lucky I am. How unimportant crap like Comcast and the iPhone and who’s gonna be at BlogHer are in the grand scheme of things. It reminds me of the friends that would get me through if something (heaven forbid) that rotten were to happen to me.
Can you do me a favor? Take a moment of quiet reflection for me and Baggage and Lisa this weekend, would ya?

Sometimes I Am Not So Nice

Generally speaking, I am a person who will go out of my way to be polite.  I will apologize when I’m not at fault, keep quiet to avoid arguments, and worry excessively that everyone is happy.
Usually.
I do have my moments.
Yesterday I picked up a little black Honda Civic from I Go (I LOVE the Honda Civic hybrid, by the way) and ran some errands during lunch.  The first 20 minutes or so were fine, but it wasn’t long before I was swearing at people cutting in front of my car on foot and by vehicle and by bicycle too. 
Let me go on a tangent here really quick.  I appreciate the efforts of cyclists to be environmentally sound and physically fit and shun car transportation for a bike.  But Chicago is FAR from being a bike-friendly city.  I’ve known since before I lived here that Chicago drivers have a way of creating lanes where there aren’t lanes.  And now the right lane most places you drive in the neighborhoods here is a combination driving/cycling/parking lane.  You can see how that would cause issues.  When I was driving around in California, there were generally two to three lanes and a BIG, WIDE bicycle lane that didn’t make you at all nervous about driving along next to the cyclists.  I mean, whether you’re at fault or not, taking out a cyclist while driving is going to bring you bad juju all around.  And the city doesn’t seem to be making a huge effort to make the roads more accomodating despite our ever increasing taxes and nightmare of a public transit system.
So, I was perhaps a little wound up by the time I got to the grocery store.  Driving in Chicago is NOT fun, nor does it put me in a particularly good mood. There was a guy standing in the aisle with his wife, and while she was shopping he was sort of standing around, pacing a bit, and swinging his shopping basket back and forth oblvious to other people trying to get through the aisle.  After saying “excuse me” to no avail, I just rammed my cart right into his basket.  He gave me a dirty look.  Perhaps I deserved it, but I would never, NEVER do something like that to an old feeble person.  He was blocking a lane and not paying attention and unlike the bicycle situation, I had every chance to hit him without consequence.
Later on I saw him hanging out on the corner of another aisle swinging his basket and this time he got out of the way before I was even 2 feet from them.
Heh.