1. The Denver airport looks like Baked Alaska. Check it out:
   
   
2. 16th street mall area is awesome for not having a car.
3. Evil super villains don’t do dinner meetings. (But they will do lunch, if you ask nicely enough).
4. The baby doesn’t particularly like flying. Which is funny to me, for some reason. But I probably won’t fly much more, anyway.
5. No matter what they tell you, bring boots. Or hardy shoes. Or something.
6. Being paid to go someplace with awesome weather (at the moment), go on a field trip, visit friends, and eat cheesecake is AWESOME.

PS… ultrasound and belly pics are forthcoming – when I’m not too lazy to get them off of my camera.

It’s amazing how life can be so crazy that you can barely stand it, and are stressing about every little thing… and one more thing happens (like, say, you have to evacuate the city because you’re pregnant and they locked the freakin’ hospital doors)… and suddenly, for some reason, everything is ok. I mean, everything is on its head, but suddenly I’m ok with it.

So here’s what happened. My dad was in the hospital, I was stressing about going home, and then my Granny broke her hip and went into the hospital. I was pretty stressed about everything, and just barely managing to hold it together. About an hour after I heard about my Granny (this was Wednesday night)… They announced the evacuation orders for my county, excluding Pearland itself. After some looking, I found out that our “voluntary” evacuation for Ike meant (among other things) that the hospitals were locking their doors. So, Chad and I decided to leave, with no great idea where we were going to go. I slept that night, drove to my office to grab my computer, and spent the rest of the day trying to help Chad get the house ready to leave. We left about 5pm, after boarding most of the windows, and packing the animals, our photos, and enough clothes to last us through Sunday.

Monitoring the traffic leaving Houston, everything to the north and west was close to gridlocked. So… we headed east down I-10. Other than two pretty serious traffic jams due to accidents (slowing us an hour each time), the traffic wasn’t that bad at all. Although it was extremely difficult to find a drive through place that wasn’t closed and boarded up.

We started looking for a hotel room in Baton Rouge, which was a lost cause, really. We headed north up I-55, and when we got to Jackson without finding a hotel, we gave up. Chad and I took turns driving and sleeping, and we made it into Southaven about 6am on Friday morning. Crazy stuff.

Friday, we slept a little, ate Abner’s, then went to the hospital so that some people Chad’s mom works with could give me an ultrasound, which was awesome. They did both 2d and 3d ultrasounds, and got some great pictures of the little one moving about, sucking its thumb, and being difficult by covering its face. It was really cool, and made the trip pretty worthwhile.

Saturday, we got up early and drive to Huntsville, and visited both my Dad and my Granny. We had a good visit, and Daddy seem to be doing a little better. He’s walking without a cane, and he was really glad to see us (and the baby). That night, we headed back to Southaven, intending to leave for home in the morning. But once we arrive in Southaven, we discovered that we could not go home. I-10 was blocked in places, and the authorities told us to stay where we were. We knew Pearland was hit kind of hard (friends lost a great deal of their roof), but that our house was at least intact, and not leaking through the roof.

So we sat back and tried to enjoy the “vacation”. Each day, we made plans to come home the next day… but between the roads and the authorities, we didn’t get to come home until Thursday. I ended up working remotely some, to keep from getting to far behind, but JSC was closed the entire week.

When we got home, we saw first hand how our house fared… we lost our fence (half the neighborhood did as well), and our shed (with the grill and everything in it), and (we discovered later) a little water got in around the windows on the back of the house. This may mean replacing all the windows and the back door, and replacing all or part of the drywall/insulation in the bedroom (and maybe part of the carpet). But overall, we didn’t fare too bad. We have power, water, and gas, so we’re all good. We even have groceries at the store, finally.

Traffic, however, sucks. My 45 minute commute has morphed into a 2 hour commute. But since that’s my biggest complaint, besides finding contractors to fix the house, I can totally survive.

And I’m far less stressed about everything else, and more centered, which makes entirely no logical sense. But I’m enjoying it, while it lasts.

Sometimes He calms the storm
With a whispered peace be still
He can settle any sea
But it doesn’t mean He will
Sometimes He holds us close
And lets the wind and waves go wild
Sometimes He calms the storm
And other times He calms His child
~Sometimes He Calms the Storm, Scott Krippayne

So I’ve been really quiet, which is typical – and yet not typical. There has been a lot going on, but long story short, I haven’t had to words to explain anything, or the emotional capacity to think through everything enough to find the words. But I’m working on it now, so this will probably be a long long post… it’s been a long time coming.

So. Being pregnant. It hasn’t been that bad, although I’ve whined a lot about it to anyone who’s gotten too close to me (mostly Chad, though, as I’ve kind of withdrawn a bit from the rest of the world). Everything is progressing well, the baby is growing great, and the doctor seems happy with all my tests for now. The two biggest problems have been my tiredness… I’m super tired all the time, and can’t seem to get enough sleep no matter what. And my emotions. Which is part of why I’ve withdrawn a bit… when spilling french fries or breaking a nail makes me cry, I have little reserves left to deal with people. And their problems. Or even my own problems.

My dad had a stroke about a month ago. It took the doctors like, three days to figure it out, so by the time they got around to “fixing” it, it was pretty bad. He was in the hospital for more than a week, then went home with no feeling in his right hand, trouble walking, an inability to read at all, some mild confusion, and vision loss on his right side. And a pretty serious case of depression. After a couple of weeks at home, and starting physical therapy, and improving a little… he had another stroke. This one has left him much more confused… I’ve talked to him a half dozen times in the last week, and every time he asks me at least twice when the baby is due. He’s not always sure why he’s in the hospital, or even where he is. They moved him from the regular hospital (where he’s been for a week) to the rehab hospital late last week, and they’re working him pretty hard there. It doesn’t look like he’ll be going back to work. Mom’s holding up pretty well, but she’s really starting to wear thin. She’s trying to decide whether to switch jobs to make a little more money and keep better insurance, or to keep her current job (which she’s only marginally happy with). Since she’s the sole breadwinner for the time being, at least, she feels like she’s under a lot of pressure.

This has caused me a great amount of stress aver the last month, as I’m not exactly in a position to drop everything and run to Huntsville to help out, and not in an emotional state to really be much help even if I went. Practically speaking, I have 6 days of vacation left for the year. To match Chad’s time off at Christmas, even though we aren’t traveling, I’ll need five of those. That leaves one lonely vacation day. Chad and I have talked about going home over a weekend… driving in to Huntsville on Friday, picking up a U-Haul trailer to hold stuff we need to bring back, and coming back through Memphis – arriving home Monday, having spent about 24 hours with each set of parents, and about 30 hours on the road. This, you might have noticed, takes two vacation days, which puts me short at Christmas, which I think at this point is inevitable. Add to this the complication that there’s a wedding in Huntsville in early November that I’m kind of expected to attend (except it’s not really a wedding, I suppose, but that’s another story). Plus, the longer we wait, the more uncomfortable I’ll be traveling. And thus the more whining Chad will have to endure on the drive.

So the long and short of this becomes… when do I go home? Later, to meet family obligations to attend a wedding, and when my dad might be a little better (if he doesn’t get worse)? Or earlier, when I can (possibly) be more help, and will be more comfortable, but will miss the other family events?

Blah. To complicate this even more, I’m not sure my folks will be here for Thanksgiving, as I’m not sure they’ll have the money to travel, or that Dad will be well enough to travel. And since I can’t go home at all in December or January, that was supposed to be Christmas for us. And I don’t know if my mom will be able to come out for as long as she was planning to in February to help with/see the baby. And Chad’s parents haven’t made any plans to come visit us before the end of the year, or after the baby comes (they will, I’m sure, but no plans yet). So me going home is my big chance to visit, until I’m able to travel with the baby, which will be like, the middle or end of March, at best.

So yeah, words have failed me lately. Life, it seems, goes on day by day, regardless of everything else. And day to day, life isn’t all that bad. It when you lump all the days together that it starts to get overwhelming, I guess.