ANOTHER FUN HOLIDAY SURPRISE

Remember the fun John and I had on our last anniversary? (his bypass surgery) Well, he tried to do a repeat performance for Mother's Day. I came to Houston Wednesday afternoon to check on him, to make sure he was holding up to the stress of this BP project OK. He seemed fine, and very happy to see me. On Thursday I ran a bunch of errands that he hasn't had time to handle, and had just got back from buying a whole bunch of groceries, to cook his favorite dinner, when I got the call. Seems my dear hubby had awakened with chest pains that morning, didn't say a word to me about it, went on to work, put up with it most of the day, then finally let the company medic take a look at him mid-afternoon. They promptly loaded him up and hauled him to the ER - where we stayed for the next five hours, then they moved him to a room so they could keep him overnight for observation. The good news is, it doesn't seem to be blockage or heart-attack related.

He finally got out of the hospital today around 5:30. The cardiologist there thinks it was probably something called pericarditis (?) - an inflammation of the sac around the heart, which would explain why it mainly hurt when he took deep breaths - the lungs created friction against the heart each time they expanded. He said it's usually caused by a virus (though sometimes by auto-immune diseases and such), prescribed some anti-inflammatory drugs, and recommended that John go see his regular cardiologist in a week or so for another ekg. Hopefully the medicine will help, and that will be that. (Prayers appreciated!)

SNAKE OIL HAWKERS

A funny thing happened on the way to this blog post. I was just sittin' on the porch this morning, mulling over Mr. Glenn Beck. I was thinking about how, every time I see or hear him, an image of one of those old timey medicine show guys flashes into my head. I found myself wondering what exactly goes through his head, as he steps out onto a stage. Do you think that, as his eyes scan over the audience, he's thinking "I have so much admiration and respect for the people in this audience!"? Or, do you suppose he's thinking "What a bunch of gullible rubes! I know just which buttons to push, to get 'em all riled up. After that, they'll be eating outta my hand, and I can get them to do anything!"? I decided maybe I should post about this, and put the question to you. Then, I went to google images, to try and grab a picture of a snake oil salesman to add to the post. Know what I found while I was there? Lampoons of just about every major politician in the last quarter century, depicting them all as snake oil salesmen! So, what does that say about politicians in general?

P.S. Many thanks to freedominion.com.pa for the above image.

A STAY OF EXECUTION

A last minute reprieve has been delivered! I'm still heading to Houston tomorrow, but only for a couple of days. When I told Lex that I wasn't too keen on abandoning all my plants in order to go to work in John's call center, she asked "I wonder if they could use me for a week here and there? I'm fixing to be between projects at work, and some extra money would sure come in handy when it's time to move." TA-DAA, problem solved! At least, for now. If she's going to be there all next week, then maybe I can get by with just going for a couple of days each week, and not have to abandon all our new plants to drought and pestilence. Yea, Lex! You're my hero (though you would have been even more of a hero, if you hadn't blabbed to Dad that I was sending you there as my spy, to keep tabs on him and make sure he's staying healthy).

FEELING TORN

I'm having such a hard time, deciding what to do. I'd really like to go spend some time in Houston right now, 'though I'm getting mixed messages from John. One minute he tells me there's no point in my coming, since we'd barely see each other. The next minute he says "If you come here I'm liable to put you to work as a telephone operator." Even though he is working a minimum of twelve hours a day, seven days a week, I still think it would be comforting for him if I was there when he finally did get home at night.

On the other hand, we haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks now, and not only do these veggies need watering every day, via a complicated system of valves that need to be shut on and off to switch from tank to well water, there's all those perennials I just planted, and John's trees that need to have water trucked part of the way to them, then hauled in buckets the rest of the way. That's a lot to ask a friend to do on a daily basis for who knows how long. And then, of course, there's the cabbage worms that need to be diligently picked off and squished, and the tomato hornworms that should be showing up any day now. What to do? What to do?

Well, when a hubby needs snuggles, a hubby needs snuggles. Veggies be damned!

SO PROUD OF MY BOYS

No rest in sight for John, nor for our son Austin. I think I told you that John was hired to come in and field calls related to the spill, no? The first day it was just him, then they got a couple more people to help him, then a dozen more, and now they've got about sixty people spread out over two 8-hr. shifts a day, working seven days a week, answering five or six thousand calls a day, and it's John's job to supervise them all. On top of that, Austin was called in to set up a database that could collect all the information from all of these calls - and he did it! In record time! And it works! Not bad for a kid fresh out of college, eh?

What a nightmare though. And all I can do is sit here and pray for all those involved - every creature, great and small.

P.S. Many thanks to expatbrazil.wordpress.com for the above image.