Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you’re thankful for a whole lotta stuff. We had a mellow Thanksgiving Day. We actually had the full meal deal last Saturday. Tim, my big bro, came up for the weekend. My mom just had a pretty major surgery a couple of weeks ago, so Mike and I made all the food and brought it up to parents’ place.

Yeah, so Mom had surgery. They went through her abdomen to the backside and did some colon work. I won’t get into the details, but essentially they did some nip and tuck and tidying up and it was a major pain in the ass. Now, she’s home and on the long road to recovery. If you know me and are familiar with this Blog, then you’re aware, that I’m not necessarily dedicated to the keeping you abreast of important current events – just recounting the mostly fun anecdotal experiences of my life. So, my lack of reporting on the surgery in no way undermines the importance of this event. If anything, I was too busy thinking, worrying and trying to figure out how to help that I just didn’t get around to Blogging on it.

Mom had one really scary morning in the hospital. She woke up at 3 o’clock and found that she was lying in a pool of blood. The nurse(s) were good for nothing. They essentially cleaned her up, gave her nothing for the pain, no good explanation for the blood loss and didn’t show up again for another three hours. I’m sorry, but I thought the point of a hospital is to be cared for. Hmmmm. Then, around 6am, Mom was in dire need for something to help her pain. I think she gave up on the Nurse call-button since it hadn’t done much good before and she may have been a bit incoherent. She got out of bed and walked out into the hall with the intention of flagging down a nurse for help. When she stepped out, another patient walking by said something to the affect of, “Oh my gosh!” (Or something to announce major concern). Mom looked down and saw that she was standing in a puddle of blood. Quite a large puddle. That, finally, got the nurse’s attention and within moments, Mom was back in bed and surrounded by eight nurses looking like deers in headlights. Uh, yeah.

There was talk of the possibility of her needing a blood transfusion but thankfully was never needed. The doctor discovered that Mom had two fist-sized blood clots in her abdomen (a big bad side effect from the surgery). Surgery was scheduled for the next day to remove those, and in the meantime she was put on Valium for the pain.

Now, FINALLY, moving on to the fun stuff – Mom on Valium! There’s a good time! In the afternoon, she asked Dad for a cup of tea with sweetner in it. He prepared it as directed, but when he looked back a bit later, the packet of sweetner was floating in the tea. “What did you do?” He asked. Mom, in her delirium replied, “I wanted sweetner packet in it!” (She does have a point).

My personal favorite mom-on-major-pain-killers moment took place when she was saying goodbye to the boys. We’d brought them by to see her and they did a terrific job of cheering her up. Mom pulled the boys close and said, “Boys, do you have a night-night song for Grandma?” The boys looked at her like ‘uh, no.’ And then under her breath in an appropriately whimsical way she sang, “Puff the Magic Dragon…” Ahh, what an appropriate song for her (temporary) drugged situation.

Thankfully, the blood clot removal surgery went really well and Mom was able to head home the next day. She’s had a couple of really rough days at home but now, two weeks post-surgery, she was well enough to come hang out at our place for a very mellow Turkey Day. And since we’d done the whole feast last Saturday, today we kept it easy and had turkey soup! It was actually really nice to have the major cooking behind us already. We had a fun time and celebrated Thanksgiving just as the Pilgrims and Native Americans must have – with some rousing games on the Nintendo Wii!

ZACHISMS
The other morning, Matthew suddenly decided that he wanted his “hair gelled like Daddy’s.” (So, just the bangs spiked up a hair…yeah, sorry for the pun). He was thrilled with the results and declared that Zachary not only also needed gelling but required a mohawk. Zach didn’t resist, so we mohawked away. Zach’s hair is super fine and fluffy on top. As soon as I gelled it up it immediately began falling towards the front forming a big peak. Zach took one look in the mirror and in a monotone stated, “I look like a rhinoceros.” Though he sounded disappointed at first, he guarded that rhino-do for the rest of the day. When I put his hood up before leaving the gym (since we’d be walking into a November Seattley day – POURING rain), he immediately pushed his hood down and said, “NO! Mom! You’ll ruin my jello!”