Whew!

I think I'll do a list. Less work.

1. Late last week Val's grandad went to the hospital, scheduled for bypass surgery as soon as his blood thinners worked their way out of his system.
2. Then very late last week, Val's grandmother came down with an infection in her pacemaker incision that put her on I-V antibiotics in the same hospital.
3. Saturday Val left for her painting workshop in Cazenovia, NY, to be gone from here all week, and she went sans Mom-Mom. This is an intense series of hands-on classes and lectures, and most of the ladies like to party at night. Val came home pretty tired. On this end I'm not only batching it, I have the kids to ride herd on.
4. This week at work was pretty intense with a big hairy deadline coming up, and I have to nag the developers to supply the info. (I pretty much succeeded. One document out of 51 to go.)
5. Tuesday, Val's uncle Gene had a "minor" heart attack and ended up in that same hospital. He asked the Doc tor if they offered family rates. He's scheduled for surgery this coming week.
6. All week the kids were supposed to clean the house to prepare it for Hannah's birthday party on Sunday. They did an fairly bad non-zero job (see post a couple weeks back). Actually, it was a pretty big non-zero, but it wasn't nearly enough. In two words: they procrastinated.
7. I took them out to eat a couple times, especially Thursday, which was Hannah's 11th birthday, besides, we were out of groceries. Beka and I finally got to the store and stocked up on a bunch of food, $165! Val and I got her a Lawyer in a Box from Mental Floss and some personalized postage stamps from whatever company it is that does them for the post office.
8. One evening I got a phone call out of the blue from a fellow motorcyclist. He was from GA, on a road trip with his teen-age daughter. I had put my name in the Gold Wing Road Riders Association book as willing to put folks up for the night, and he wanted to know if they could impose on me. I was delighted to have the opportunity, and they ended up staying in the house instead of setting up their tent. Lots more comfortable and convenient for them, I"m sure, and we enjoyed their company. The kids were surprisingly suspicious of allowing total strangers into the house, but I guess that's their east coast background. When they got here, the girls quickly latched onto the daughter. I got some work done first thing in the next morning—everyone but me slept in. We had a very pleasant breakfast when everyone got up, and our new friends left for NYC about 10:00.
9. Val got home Saturday evening, tired.
10. Sunday Val cracked the whip over the kids to make the house presentable. I helped, took care of some of the outside stuff. We learned that Hannah had invited her guests to stay from 11 AM until 7:30 PM! The party was technically a double one—one of her classmates had her birthday today—and we had 21 kids show up. Fortunately for us the other mom was here and she helped out a lot. They liked the mattress I inflated for the pool, and most of the kids didn't leave until after 7.
11. I had a scheduled handball date so I was able to skip out for a couple hours. It turned out to be about four hours. On the way home I stopped at a local ice cream place for a root beer float. A few feet down the road on the way home I noticed some people changing a tire on their van. When it registered that they were women, I doubled back and helped them out. Turned out to be a single mom with three kids and a retarded friend on their way to church, and they had no idea what they were doing. I sent them to the ice cream place with my credit card while I changed the tire. When I got the toy spare tire installed, I noticed that the back tire on that side was about to go—large area of steel cord showing, and it was already nearly flat. Long story short, I left them at WalMart a while later getting two new tires installed, my treat. The guy at the store gave me a discount and shook my hand. Val says I'm such a boy scout.

And that's the week that was. I'm beat!