Sunday, June 9, 2013

This is the Stuff

As I sit here and listen to my mother-in-law, nephew, niece and son play Apples to Apples this morning, I know this is where I am supposed to be.  This week has been full of ups and downs, but this kind of family time is the handrail I hang onto when things throw me off balance.  This is the stuff that gets me through the hardest times.
Minor daily disasters (and we know I have MANY of those), just do not matter when someone you love is facing a life threatening disease. Through everything that happened this week, I just kept my brother-in-law Philip in the forefront of my mind.  This is nothing, I thought.  This will pass, I thought.  Nothing is going to get in the way of this weekend with family, I thought.
It was the perfect family weekend.  I watched my kids play with their cousins.  I laughed with my sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law as we all made inappropriate jokes.  We ate lots of great food (too much perhaps), the kids swam and played Rock Band.  Philip joined in when he felt well enough and rested a lot.  We all worried.  We are all very worried.  We all want to fix this.  We are willing this "call" to come and save our son/husband/father/brother/uncle from this unfair sentence. So, we laugh as we worry.  We pray and hope as we worry.  We try to enjoy this time with each other while we are screaming in our heads, "We NEED this call, NOW!!!"
Through it all, we LAUGH!  As my mother-in-law said, "Why cry over spilled toilet water?"  Indeed, Sandra, indeed.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Today started like a typical Sunday:   wake up a little later than usual, drink coffee, decide to go for a walk.  Well, perhaps I should have stopped at coffee because that's where the day went awry.  I started out the front door for my walk and this is what I saw:
My husband, the groundhog hunter, had captured another one of our uninvited house guests. I will call this unfortunate event number 1.  After telling my husband of his victory over the 4th groundhog in a series of ??? groundhogs, I left for my walk.  While on my walk, my oldest son Aidan texted me that he would like to be picked up from his sleepover.  No problem, I'll be there after my walk.   When I returned from my walk Eric and Tanner were gone to release the groundhog in my van.  This forced me to take Eric's car to pick up Aidan.  Unfortunate event #2.  I got Aidan and returned home and opened the garage door where Eric's car is normally parked.  Instead I see lawn equipment.  Hmm, ok he must be changing where he parks to the other side of the garage.  I have no opener for that side.  So, I just park E's car in the driveway-unfortunate event #3.  Later when I leave to take Tanner to tennis, I get in my van and back out of my usual garage spot and, you guessed it-completely forgot that E's car was in an unusual place.
  
This series of unfortunate events led to this outcome.  Please note that my husband just recently got his car (the red one) back from the repair shop for $600 worth of damage done to the opposite side by a pothole the size of a small elephant.  Well, I didn't want this side to feel left out.  For some reason when I look at these pictures, I want to yell, "The van is the winner!  The van is the winner!"  But, I guess that wouldn't be wise.