Murphy's Law

When I can only plan six hours of sleep, I'll get four. This sucks.
iPastor came to bed sneezing and restless. I assume he was reacting to dust from several of the ancient computers we dredged out of the basement to dump at Best Buy for free. Whenever a school got rid of a Mac lab, someone got wind of it and claimed all the old Macs for our basement, because we're Mac people and we could use six boxes of keyboards and peripherals. We kept them long enough there was hope of marketing them on eBay for the nostalgia crowd, but its hardly worth the hassle.
After his sneezing shook me awake, he finally got to sleep, but I couldn't get back. I gave up after an hour and got up to push a load of laundry through and seek a little wisdom from the interwebs before I hit the shower. Wish me luck all.

The past two nights at work have been overstaffed, and I've volunteered to be cut. Can't make any money that way, but I think I've got enough on my plate right now. In the midst of everything else, I have to drive two hours to take my PRAXIS II exam. I've hardly made the best use of my time studying with everything else going on, but I either know this stuff or I don't. Wouldn't be so bad if the blessed thing didn't start at 7:30 am. The test is scheduled in two blocks, and they are 4 hours apart, so we are
also attempting a coffee stop to meet with Jeff from View from the Cloud. Hopefully a good time will be had by all. The whole family is accompanying me for a few hours away, and will get to amuse themselves in the moderately big town while I test. Let's hope it helps.

The family got MIL checked in to a lovely care center. I worked there about 10 years ago doing paperwork for the home health office. They were just starting to renovate at that time; formerly it was a pretty sad little dingy cinderblock building. Now it is beautiful. Although some rooms still show a little wear, they have gone a long way toward warming those up, and the newer areas are wonderful.
Elsie is very weak, and very sleepy, but still in there and able to let us know what she thinks.
And now we wait.

Inevitable

MIL goes to a nursing home tomorrow. Cancer still sucks.
Thankfully, she still has no pain, and has had no nausea for a few weeks. Hopefully we can keep her comfortable.


Too weary and uninspired to write much these days.

We interrupt this blog for the following profound statement...

Cancer sucks.

Crises of different kinds

Got home to OPK and missing kittens. Must go help sort and search.


Update: Kittens found. Mom is hero. Kids happy and grateful. Mission accomplished again.

Success!

Food was eaten. Stories were shared. Shopping was done. Xcel Centre was successfully rocked. Mission accomplisehed; details and pictures when I get all the cables and stuff in the same place.

Steady as she goes...

Not much new. MIL still in hospital. Two jobs today. Maintain...

Gah.

MIL was very weak and almost fell on me today. I was walking with her so I sat her down on the floor. The hospice nurse was on her way over for a routine visit. The fall did no damage, but she's been very weak, her feet have been swollen, and she's a bit dehydrated, so we ran her to the clinic and the doc opted to admit her. They'll run IVs to try to get the good fluids in and the bad fluids out. It's getting harder to keep her at home. I have been working in elder care long enough that the chores don't phase me, but the house isn't easy to accommodate for her. If she doesn't get stronger we may not be able to keep her at home any longer, which breaks my heart. It will probably be easier on everyone, even her, to find her a place with staff trained to handle her care. Just sucks to think about.

German bloggy goodness

Alex got her own blog. Go check her out and leave her lots of comments.

Woohoo!

My night looked a little like this.




It was a gorgeous night, the bugs were remarkably absent, and a good time was had by all.

Ten on Tuesday...

Today its 10 memorable vacation moments. Let's see how far I can get with this one...

1. When I was about 13 we headed to Oregon. The family van broke down in Spearfish SD. My brother and dad had to push it through the campground, but there was a very slight hill so my brother trotted along behind the van pushing it one-handed. It was a picture-worthy moment. Unfortunately no-one had a camera.


2. This one is a little obvious:



















3. This was fun with seagulls on New Smyrna Beach, Florida Atlantic coast:



















4. Sun Studios in Memphis

























5. Off-Off-Broadway cast party in NYC. If you're wondering what's up with the chicken, it was a production of The Vagina Monologues. Ahem.






















6. When the kids were little, we were rather insistent upon stopping to view large concrete oddities such as these in Whapeton ND:























7. And Pelican Rapids MN























8. We are Twins fans, both at home, where they have lots od good "tailgate" activities:



















9. ...and we managed to see them in Spring Training as well, at the Cincinnati Reds training camp in Sarasota.




10. Last but not least, fun from a day trip to Underwater World at the Maul of America. Not shown here was Thing 4's unnatural attachment to the walking shark mascot. Creepy.


Well there's 10. Hope you had as much fun as I did browsing through the pictures.

Helpful advice...

Hymn of the Month

A couple years ago we started having a Hymn of the Month at our church. We've had some old classice, and learned some of those that don't get taken out and dusted off as often.
July's hymn is relatively new, copywritten in 2002. Check it out.

MNDOT Wants to kill me slowly

Our normally 2 1/2 - 3 hour drive to the cities tonight took 4 hours. We alternated routes to avoid a detour and ran smack into more detours. iPastor is sure the fine folks at the DOT had a lovely laugh while effectively entangling every east/west route out of the metro this summer.
Thing 1's mission presentation in the morning at church. We're heading home via a southern route. Maybe we'll get there by Friday.

This is me just about every day lately...

Oh, this could get interesting...

Jesse Ventura is at it again. Makes for an entertaining show, anyway.

Girl's day out

So my friend from work and I are going to see Neil Diamond. When I was about 12 or 13, our little town got cable. I must have watched The Jazz Singer on HBO twenty times if I watched it once. We are ditching the kids and heading to the big city for the day, to explore the Global Market and all the Thrift Stores! Wheee! I'm ready for a little break. We'll head into the cities for a quick trip this Sunday to attend Thing 1's mission trip church service, and there's a free concert next Wednesday night that I'll take the kids to see. Neil Diamond is July 20, so there's a little variety coming up in my life. Not so many getaway opportunites for iPastor, but he has a new obsession in the form of Frets on Fire. He's been geeking all over getting it to run well and rigging a guitar for it, so he's in his happy little element.

Ten on Tuesday...

for today was 10 favorite movie characters. I can only come up with Fezzik from The Princess Bride, and Arnold Beckoff from Torch Song Trilogy. Lame.

Wastin' time

Trying to get all my 'net surfin' out of the way while I am with MIL tonite/tomorrow. Then when I get home I can go right to work and get stuff done. Yeah, right...