A Vacation from Vacation

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to DFW for a week. It wore me out. Between constantly running around and constantly being with my parents and my mother's need for constantly eating, I was draggin' big time. I haven't even unpacked yet. I thought this week would be my resting, recovering from the "vacation".

Then my husband's appendix exploded.

Thankfully, he was in surgery when it happened. It was all really fast, actually. Well, as fast as hospitals EVER are, right? But when they went to do it the easy, fast way (laporoscopy), he started bleeding out. He'd had a heart attack like two months ago, and the blood thinners were messing it up. Thankfully, the surgery had been delayed for a couple of hours while they had platelets brought in from Austin, so they'd planned for this possibility and handled it. Then the surgeon went to remove the appendix, and "it fell apart in his hands". To quote him, "It was the nastiest thing I've ever seen." Coming from a SURGEON, I figure that's pretty gross, and did not allow my brain to visualize. So now his recovery will be longer.

That gives me another week. I have a week before I head back to DFW to ditch the kids --- errr --- drop off the kids at my parents. I'll get to DFW on Friday or Saturday, then Tuesday, I'm heading for Atlanta for RWA's National Conference. Shari and I will be having fun, but it's a big time, hectic, fast-paced kind of fun. Getting up early (that means before noon - yikes) and getting to bed around midnight (if we decide to crash early) with constant events in the meantime. Seminars, the bar, classes, the bar, editor/agent appointments and panels, networking, the bar. See what I mean? It's crazy, but in a super fun way!

I'll return from there on August 1st. And I'll need a vacation. Recharge and all that. Because for the next two weeks afterward will be all about BACK TO SCHOOL. For four kids. That's a lot of shopping. I figure coming August 16th, I'll be ready for a day of nothingness in the worse way - the first day of school, and once again, my house will be nothing but QUIET!

Now, if only I can survive til then...

The Sweetest Thing

I've been gone to Dallas/Ft. Worth for the last eight days or so. I take the kids up there to their Vacation Bible School. And my mom got the date for her cornea transplant while I was there. I knew she was going to have one - I knew her eyes were bad, but what I didn't realize was HOW bad they are.

Until church Sunday morning.

Something caught my eye, but when I looked over at my parents, nothing was there. Then I caught it after the next song. My dad quietly slipping the open song book onto my mom's lap, while she passed him her closed song book. After each song, the same thing happened.

My dad was turning it to the page number for her, then silently slipping it onto her lap before he took the one she handed him and turned his own pages. Never in my life have I seen such a sweet thing.

So small, and yet so incredibly significant.

I sat there, blinking repeatedly, vowing not to cry and being so happy for them to have that kind of devotion, that kind of love.