Caroline went back to school yesterday morning for the first time since last Tuesday. And, I’m not going to lie, it was a little rough to get back in the routine of getting up and heating up a bowl of instant oatmeal. Then I started to look around the kitchen for her lunchbox and couldn’t find it.
That’s when it dawned on me that she probably left it at school six days ago.
And so when I thought the worst part of my day was going to Starbucks and discovering all the good chairs were taken and the electrical outlet by my table didn’t work? I was wrong.
The worst part of my day was when I had to empty out the thermos full of cottage cheese that I’d packed for Caroline’s lunch last Tuesday.
I just dry-heaved at the memory of it.
Cottage cheese is henceforth dead to me.
Anyway, I didn’t mention yesterday that Gulley’s boys ended up staying with us this weekend. Nena (Gulley’s grandmother for those of you who might be new) had a heart attack on Thursday night and Gulley drove to go see her in the hospital. And I volunteered to keep the boys because I knew it would be better than Christmas morning for Caroline to get to have a sleepover with her peeps.
So we spent Saturday night eating cheeseburgers and playing Wii and watching G-Force. Then P cooked pancakes for everyone on Sunday morning and we went to see Journey 2: The Mysterious Island later that afternoon. Which was actually pretty good.
Even though I am a little disgruntled because I have determined that this whole 3-D movie thing is a scam. A SCAM I TELL YOU. Because when I looked at movie times, there was only one showing that was in normal 2-D like the good old days and four showings in 3-D.
I picked the 3-D showing because it was the most convenient (all part of their dastardly plan) and became even more irritated when I bought our tickets and realized kids’ ticket prices are only FIFTY CENTS less than an adult ticket. It’s a total racket.
And I’m not even going to get into all my thoughts on Titanic being re-released in 3-D. Do we really need to see that ship go down and all those people drown in 3-D?
Maybe it’s just me. I don’t enjoy wearing plastic glasses while I watch a movie. They make my head hurt. And after the movie was over, Jackson said he didn’t think the graphics were very good. But I hated to tell him I didn’t think it was a production error as much as the fact that I saw him eat handfuls of greasy popcorn and then put his fingers all over the lenses of his 3-D glasses.
But enough about that.
Let’s talk about Nena.
She had a mild heart attack Thursday night. And Gulley said she was like Scarlett O’Hara in a crisis. She had the presence of mind to take an aspirin and then push the call button in her apartment for help. They ran a bunch of tests at the hospital and determined it was a heart attack. And they knew she was feeling better when she asked for her lipstick before the doctor came in to see her.
But after a heart cath yesterday, they determined she needs to have a quadruple bypass. By the time most of you are reading this, she’ll be in surgery. And she’s 88 years old.
Gulley left town again yesterday afternoon so she could be there for the surgery. And she packed the pair of jeans that Nena once declared looked like something that should be thrown in the trash. Gulley said she’ll know Nena is going to be okay when she wakes up and starts complaining about how bad those jeans look.
So if you think about it, I’d sure appreciate your prayers for Nena’s surgery and recovery. She means a lot to me. And more than that, she means the world to some of my very favorite people.
And if you want to know more about Nena, here are two of my favorite Nena posts. You can read them here and here.
Thanks, y’all.