The Never Ending Journey

You may have noticed (or not, judging by the hits/comments!) that I haven't been around for a while.  It has been a cuh-RAY-zee month around here.  I have just gotten back into town and had to take a day to recover before I could even think about writing about it!

It all started with me trying to up my mom-cred by making breakfast cookies bars.  Basically peanut butter cookies with oats, chocolate chips, Cheerios, and golden raisins.  It turns out that raisins trump chocolate chunks on my kids' will-they-eat-it-o-meter, so I was left with a couple dozen (delicious!) breakfast cookies bars.  (Not to be dissuaded, I will make them again subbing dried blueberries or cranberries for the golden raisins.  By my count those are both more exotic than the raisins, but my kids are used to them.  If you want the recipe, I'll be happy to send it to you.)

Anyhoo, a week later found me finishing up the last of the now considerably tougher cookies.  I took a chomp and found something decidedly harder than chocolate chunks in my mouth.  What did the required mouth fishing produce?  A tooth.  More specifically, the most expensive tooth in my head:  cracked by my night-time 'angst' (what do I have to be angst-y about?  Who knows.  But I clench my teeth like a vise.), root canal-ed, crowned, and necessitating a fairly beasty (read: hideous and expensive) bite guard and now sitting grusomely in my hand.

Luckily for me, our dentists back in Ginormousville are family friends.  I called Dr. M in a panic and she squeezed me into her schedule for Monday.  I know Wester has dentists, but they are not my dentist and they certainly don't let me call them at home on Saturday mornings!  Expecting to be gone three days tops, I packed up the kids stuff and headed for Grandma's house in Ginormousville.

Needless to say, the course of good dental work did not run smooth.  The tooth couldn't be saved and would have to be removed.  Feeling like a hillbilly reject, I scheduled a round of appointments to get rolling on a dental implant (the other options too grim to contemplate).  I jumped through all of the appropriate hoops, but I had to stay through to the next Monday to have the tooth removed.  No probs!  I totally hung out with Chica and planned to settle in for the duration.  And did laundry.

Before I was out of bed the next morning, I get a call from T.  Aunt Bibi had called looking for me because my dad had checked himself into the hospital again.  He was weak and his speech was slurred.  Yikes!  I called his cell phone, and sure enough, slurred non-Daddy sounding speech.  He said he was all alone with the nurse taking his history and that was all I had to hear.  I was off to see him.

I had to juggle the kids and the dogs and the grandparents who were half-way to the ranch and Sister L who also wanted to go, but not until after her hair appointment.  That turned out to be a logistical blessing because by the time she was ready to leave, the grandparents had made it back home to take the kids and dogs.

Five hours later, we arrived at the hospital just in time for the diagnosis: diabetes.  The treatment for another recent ailment had suppressed his pancreatic function and tipped him into a full-blown diabetic episode.  That slurred speech?  Yeah, that would be my stubborn-'ol-coot-drivin'-himself-to-the-hospital daddy about to slip into a sugar coma.  Nice.

Luckily, diabetes is way less scary than the stroke we were all worried it was but were too afraid to mention out loud.  It took three days in ICU and two more on the regular ward to get his sugar levels anywhere near under control.  He came home Wednesday and got settled at home.  And I did laundry. Again.

Sister L and I headed back home Thursday.  That night T gave me the verbal equivalent of puppy dog eyes and begged me to come out to the ranch for the weekend.  Seeing as it was Father's Day and his birthday, I caved in.  (Have I mentioned how much I loathe long car trips?)  We left Friday and came back Sunday.  Total hours in the car to this point: 24.  At least ten of them we sans kids!

As soon as we got back to Ginormousville, we switched the car seats back into my Mom Mobile and headed to Small Town.  Z was going to day camp with her best-y, KK, and I got to play with KK's Mom.  So much fun!  So little sleep!  Five kids running wild!  And - wait for it! - more laundry!

Camp was over on Thursday.  It would have been nice to relax and spend one last night with our friends, but that was not to be.  I had to get my tooth pulled the next morning.  Yay!  We finally rolled into Ginormousville again around 10:00.

If there could be an up side to having a tooth pulled, it was that as soon as the narcotic haze lifted, I would be allowed to go back to Wester.  Um, no.  The doc insisted that I come back on Monday for a follow-up.  You know, something piddly like making sure the bone graft wasn't falling out of my head.  I got through the whole procedure without shedding a tear only to break down on the phone with T when I told him I wasn't allowed to leave until Monday.

Come Monday, the second the doc said I was good to go, I packed up the kids, dogs, bags, giant bolts of fabric, sewing machine I swiped borrowed from my parent's house, assorted flotsam that accumulates on a THREE week unplanned road trip and headed west.  All we lacked was a rocking chair strapped to the roof of my car to look like the suburban version of Beverly Hillbillies!

Six hours (the loooooongest six hours in history!) we rolled up on our little piece of west Texas.  Home, home, home!  I am so happy to be here!  I need to start some laundry.