In hindsight, I should have waited until after Labor Day to start
school. This week has been a choppy bunch of craziness and our school days were
the only part of that I had much control over. But when I decided to start
August 29th, I didn’t know that my mom’s surgery would be on the 27th.
I didn’t know when our friends would come to town. I didn’t know when all the
peaches and pears would be ready to can. Then I didn’t want to start waffling
and make the kids think they could talk me into shifting things around. I had
thought I’d be going to the cabin next weekend and wanted to make sure we got
some school days in before that. But after all that’s happened this week, I can’t
imagine getting the kids packed up, fitting in a partial school day on
Thursday, driving 200 miles, sleeping somewhere unusual without Dan for bedtime
backup, then driving 200 miles home three days later. It’s just not in any of
our best interests. So we’ll go back to school for a four day week on Tuesday
and should be calm enough to catch up on the things we dropped when our friends
were able to come a few hours earlier than expected.
This afternoon after they left, all the stress of everything that’s
happened whacked me and I felt like I could have slept the rest of the day.
Instead, I ran a bunch of errands without any children and at least crossed a
bunch of stuff off my mental to-do list. I got free cocoa for my birthday too!
I haven’t talked much about my mom’s hospital stay. In early
August, she went to the doctor to have a lump checked out. Shortly thereafter,
she had a biopsy and found out it was definitely breast cancer. She waited
until after a visit from out-of-state cousins and had a double mastectomy on
Monday. I was frustrated that I couldn’t find a way to be at the hospital with
her during that day, but my dad, sister, BIL, and uncles were all there and she
didn’t get out of surgery until evening when I was able to visit anyway. Tuesday
my MIL and SIL could watch the boys so I was able to stay most of the day. My
dad has had some health issues over the years but my mom has always been really
healthy. It’s become very clear that she’s the one who holds the family
together since my dad isn’t nearly as good at keeping us informed as to what’s
going on. The ups and downs over the past couple weeks have been pretty scary
as first there was loads of bad news, then more reports would come and negate
the previous thoughts. I’ve been grateful to have my sister to freak out with
and it’s been wonderful to see how many people came to visit and let all of us
know they are praying and thinking of her.