OMG, what the hell happened to you????
Well... life happened.
At the beginning of August, we come home from a visit with relatives and the first thing my husband does is rip the living shit out of his Achilles tendon. To this day, we still don't know how. Officially he was wrestling an alligator but all I saw him do was take suitcases out of the car. At least it didn't happen while he was on the beach. Pete was hobbling around for months in a walking cast, bitching every limp of the way through PT. At least we didn't need a surgeon to go in with knitting needles to repair it.
August is also the start of school in our neck of the woods. TOLF started Kindergarten! She's in a private school so my minivan had to get used to a new routine. Carpool/dropoff starts at 7 AM. Too bad I don't wake up until 7:30, earliest. ;-) Lots of work helping with homework and room volunteering and other activities.
Right after Kindergarten starts, is preschool for TNLF. Mom's taxi has overlapping routes now. She loves it, has a wonderful time, is learning her colors and numbers, and by the time she comes home she's too tired to pee. (To review, this was the child who was conceived right before my Vegas trip back in 2008.)
The baby is bound and determined to get by on his looks so he refuses to walk - just gives you a big smile and bats the big blue eyes and expects you to pick him up and carry him.
Just when we thought everything was under control, everyone started getting sick. Right around Halloween through the end of the year, a week didn't go by where someone wasn't in the ER or urgent care with something. The baby's turn was on Thanksgiving day. I got the meal ready, turned the gravy-making over to my mom and ran the little guy down to the chidrens' ER. Poor little guy had green stuff dripping everywhere. Thankfully it was only a cold but easily the worst I've ever seen.
Long story short, in December an ENT decides that Pete needs his tonsils out. Looks like he was Typhoid Mary for the family - his infection was the reason we were all sick. First order of business after New Years' was surgery. First time in general anesthesia. Woke up looking like he got hit with a hammer. Two weeks of a tough recovery but he's glad he did it. Ever since, colds have been few, minor and last only a couple of days - for all 5 of us.
Last but certainly not least, my mom is at an age where hip breaking happens. She fell - in a doctor's office of all places - and you could hear the crack 10 feet away. Their rural home is closest to Bumblefuck General Hospital so IMHO, she didn't get the best care in the world. Being made to wait a day and a half to get the bones pinned together was bad enough. But then she woke up during the procedure. Claims she didn't feel any pain but could describe in detail how the surgeon was installing the pin in her femur and how the retractors holding the wound open felt like a web. She had nightmares for a couple of days. So did I!
Mom has been having some good rehab (not at Bumblefuck but at a real PT center) and was sprung the week between Christmas and New Year's. Yes she spent Christmas in a rehab center but she's just glad to feel better and stronger now that some hardware is holding her bones together.
This week is literally the first time in MONTHS that I've had a chance to breathe and even think for a time about anything not directly related to my job or caring for my family.
So combine that with work picking up (yea! paychecks!) there's not much time to blog on all things Manilow. I kept on top of things by reading on my iPhone when I could. When I'm camped out at my desk working Radio Manilow is on. BTW, Barry, thank you for getting rid of the abbadaba monkey song. I was going to walk to PS and delete it from your system myself if I heard that One. More. Time!
I also listened to all the stories about the close of Barry's show at the Paris. I understood the sense that an "era" was ending. But since I had only made one Vegas trip, it was hard to be that nostalgic myself. That trip was what I needed, when I needed it, but wasn't a regular part of my life.
When I first started this blog, I talked about how Barry's music was put away for a while as other priorities came up, but it was something that was always there, that you could always turn back to when you need it. It's even more true now. Random vignettes on Radio Manilow are always a welcome relief and 15 Minutes is permanently installed in my car CD player for those rare times when the kids aren't with me.
Barry - for the love of God, take care of yourself and give your body time to heal after surgery. Believe me I understand how much work it is (read above). No one is going to be impressed if you kill yourself trying to recover faster. There's no shame in taking the time it takes. Hold off on the scheduling until you're back to 100%, OK? Stressing yourself out only makes it worse.
But once you are recovered, make sure you keep that Atlanta date. I'll find a way to get down front to see the show again. Thanks for trying to get back here. I can't believe it's been four years already!
Oops - someone needs her homework checked and I have to finish a contract for a new job. Maybe I'll find time to catch up with ManilowTV this weekend.
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