A Summer to Remember - Unfortunately

This summer has been one of those times that mark subtle, but permanent, changes in my life  And not in a welcome way.

My father was on oral antibiotics for an infection, and was not getting better.  He was admitted to the hospital to be put on IV antibiotics, and to find out why his white blood count had been increasing over the last year.  The doctors found he had a form of leukemia.  It's in the early stages, and they're going to keep an eye on things for a while.  If we're lucky, this is the form that has an average live expectancy of about 25 years.  In 25 years, Dad will be over 100.  Hopefully the leukemia will never be an issue. (Update: Turns out the problem may have been a reaction to his antibiotics and not leukemia.)

What my kids will remember most about this summer is the spiders at Grandma's (the house I grew up in). 

Normally, spiders don't bother me.  Any I find are usually escorted out the door to live the remainder of their lives 'free and in the wild' as the Kratt brothers say.  But not these.  My daughter found the first one in the hall bath while she was getting ready for bed.  She insisted it was a brown recluse.  Not wanting to freak out the kids, and never having (knowingly) seen one, I told her it wasn't.  The next morning (Sunday), after checking a blown up photo she took, and looking on the internet, I had to (as she put it) eat my words.  Plans were made to start cleaning  up and spraying the house.  Those plans were put on fast forward when, that night, she saw another on the family room wall near the TV.  Spraying started that night, and as things were being moved away from the walls, two more were found near the TV.  All four of these spiders were apprehended, had their mug shots taken, and their identities confirmed (well - except for the part about checking the number and location of eyes.  I am not getting my face close enough to theirs to do that!)  A judge and jury of one (me) determined the sentence and the condemned were flushed.  And I am, very quietly inside where few people see it, freaking out.

Wanted

Imagine a time when all conceptions are planned in advance.  Parents-to-be would know what's going to happen and would be prepared ahead of time for a new addition to their family.  No surprises, unless the parents'-to-be attitude is "we'll take what we get, when we get it".

No human endeavor is ever perfect, and even if we were to try to make every child conceived a 'wanted' child, we would never reach 100 percent.  But I think this is a goal we need to at least try to reach.  If every child conceived were a 'wanted' child, abortion would not be an issue.  Child abuse and neglect would not be issues.  So much time and effort would not be wasted on hating 'the other side', because I think all sides could agree to this goal.

But I also think that a lot of people - far too many - want conflict, not cooperation.  Cooperation doesn't get them the attention that conflict does.  Until our society stops rewarding those who create conflict, and starts rewarding those who cooperate, we will never be as great a country as we could be.  Far too many issues will never be addressed.  As I said, no human endeavor is ever perfect, but we could be a lot better than we currently are.

Road Trip!

Like a lot of families, every summer we go visiting the relatives.  I spend the last few weeks of school sorting and packing, and trying to limit what the kids take.  We need to get it all back home and still have enough to keep them from getting bored.  This year we had the added pleasure of bring one of our cats with us.  She started needing medicine every day, and she'll hide whenever someone who's not family comes into the house.  So much for leaving her at home in a friend's care.

Departure day finally arrives, after it's own set of delays.  The evening before we're finally ready to start, the trunk is packed, the kids are ready, the cat's things are ready, the food for the trip is ready, and Hubby gets a call about a major problem at work.  He spends the next 13 hours fixing it, and the trip is delayed another day.  The next day we actually start.  After about two hours of driving, Hubby is having problems staying awake, and I take over driving.  Everything seemed to be going fine until just outside of Indy.

The car started telling me the front right tire was low.  We found a gas station, and checked the tire.  It was just fine.  I should have checked the back tires.  A few more miles down the road, and the tire was toast.  So, we're on the side of the interstate with the trunk unpacked, and the kids finding all sorts of 'interesting' things on the ground by the car.  Hubby puts the 'donut' on and I'm trying to figure out how to repack everything, including the blown tire.  Somehow we manage not to leave anything behind.  We drive into Indy and find a car repair shop.  They direct us to a tire place, who doesn't have what we need.  They direct us to a second tire shop, who also doesn't have what we need.  They send us on to a third place, where we can finally get a new tire.  The trunk is emptied again.  The kids, the cat, and all our stuff is hauled into the store and we camp there for the next two hours.

After the tire was fixed - and the trunk, kids and cat repacked - Hubby asked for directions back to the interstate.  It turns out that all our driving from shop to shop put us less than 1000 yards from where we changed the tire by the side of the road.  Hubby joked if we'd had GPS, he would have found the right shop the first time and he could have just walked the tire over to get it fixed.  That way the kids and I wouldn't have had to get dragged all over.

Hmm...Waiting a couple of hours in a car on the side of the road with kids and a cat.  Maybe its just as well we didn't have a GPS.