Gracious, what a year it’s been!  Yes, I realize it’s only the 11th of January, but my goodness it’s already been quite a year.

My mother, on January 2nd, came down with what she thought was a nasty stomach virus but what turned into acute diverticulitis which landed her in the hospital in so much pain that four (FOUR!!) doses of morphine barely touched her agony.  Couple this horror with an incompetent doctor and a badly run hospital and you get serious complications (blot clots! pneumonia! except not! just kidding!).  I spent every available moment running interference for mom at the hospital in an attempt to keep them from killing her by accident.  Meanwhile, I called in every favor I’ve ever had with anyone I could find to keep my children while this was going on.  I also cannot believe I still have a job since I barely checked my email and did all my conference calls from mom’s bedside.

“The first 6 days of 2013 were really, really bad” is the point I’m trying to make here.

Mom got out of the hospital on a Wednesday evening.  Then Dave’s mother came to Oklahoma City to have surgery on Friday! See? It’s been quite a year!  The good news is: Dave’s mother was in a decent hospital with doctors who actually know how to practice medicine so she is doing just fine (although she went home without her thyroid, which was the plan, but still, she went home MISSING PART OF HERSELF. NBD).

And then Saturday (yesterday) my precious cousin lost her father to a stroke.  This is my cousin who recently adopted newborn twins.  And her father’s stroke happened on the day of twins’ first birthday party.  The over-the-top party my cousin had been planning for months.  Instead of celebrating her boys, she spent the day at the hospital with her daddy clinging to life.  And now I’ll go keep her babies while she and her husband attend a wake and a burial.

2013 is kind of a jerk so far.

I spent New Years day planning projects and weight loss schemes and resolving to “do better”.  But these first 11 days left no room for improving anything.  Instead, I’m just grateful for the status quo.  Everyone in my house is healthy.  My mother is alive.  My mother-in-law doesn’t have cancer.  And I suppose, in a way, I’m grateful that my cousin’s father has been relieved of his suffering and now his family can go about the business of grieving his loss.

I’ve put my resolutions aside for now.  There will be time for that later.  For now, I’m going with the flow.