When Life Slaps You in the Face

This morning I wasn't feeling too good, so at about 5:45am I camped out in the bathroom for awhile. After that I went upstairs with the intention of doing a little work before heading to my job. I got into my email and found one from my brother Ken which changed all that.

Last night Ken and his wife Jean were driving down from Show Low to have dinner with their two daughters. Somewhere between there and Payson the roads were slushy. They had rain and sleet and snow and sleet off and on, in one spot they hit some ice and lost control, and ended up rolling twice.

My brother came out of it rather battered, but able to get out. They had to use the jaws of life to get Jean out. She didn't fare so well. They rolled in her direction, so she took the worst of it. We figure her right arm must have gotten pinned between her and the arm rest. She ended up with a compound fracture and inch or so below the elbow, both bones broken above the wrist with another piece broken off, and several cracks in her wrist and hand. On her left arm, the lobes of on of the humurous bone were sheared off. She had a chip broken out of her hip, and she smacked the back of her head pretty hard. She says she remembers the first roll, but that is all.

She had surgery this afternoon to put her right arm back together. The doctor said he wasn't even sure how they were going to do it because there were 7 sections of bone to put back together. There was a possibility that they would work on the other arm, but they said they would probably schedule a second surgery for that. We haven't heard how the surgery went yet.

DramaMama and I went over to the hospital around 10:30 and stayed for a couple hours. Ken was in pretty good spirits, and Jean was awake and talking to us.

Jean does stained glass with their own business, and had several pieces in the back of the Yukon. They got obliterated, and all of the windows in the vehicle were gone. You would think with all of that glass that they would have been sliced up, but neither of them got cut.

Apparently, they had just gotten car insurance re-instated. In fact, Ken said that about 20 minutes before the accident, their agent called and said they were covered again. Where they were, they had very limited cell service, so he called the agent and was able to say they rolled, Jean was hurt, and the call dropped. Once Ken got into Payson, after they life flighted Jean to Scottsdale, he was able to talk to the agent and get it all squared away.

THEN... Ken had to rent a car and drive for an hour and a half to get to the hospital where they took Jean. I personally think that would have sucked big time.

So all in all, they came out of it fairly well considering. The Yukon was destroyed, but it held is shape and protected them.

Oh... and it was Ken's birthday.

Honey-Dids

Its feels good to finally get some of those lagging projects done. The kind that your wife assigned you 6 months ago and never got around to.

Today I made a list of things to do, and have scratched off all but 2. I even did them before I scratched them off.

One of them made DramaMama both happy and annoyed at the same time. For a very long time we have had a network cable strung from my office, down the hall, down the stairs, behind a bookcase, turned right to hide under the couch sort of, then under DramaMama's desk where it plugged unto her computer. Easily seen it is, how this attractive solution to connectivity might not suit.

So anyway, for Mother's Day I planned to fix the original cable. I was going to put new connectors on it and remove the old cable then just let her discover that the cable was gone. I weren't feeling good, so instead I gave her the package of new connectors as one of her presents. The old cable used to work, then with a new configuration, it didn't, so I strung the one through the house and got it working. The part that annoyed DramaMama was that before I tried putting new connectors on the old one, I plugged it in, and... it worked. I could have switched it out several months ago with not much effort. *sheepish grin*

I also drained the fish tank of oh-so-wholesome-looking fishy poop water, cleaned the things from inside, dumped the highly poopified blue rocks from the bottom, and when the level of water was low enough, I took on the task of capturing Frick, the rogue algae eater, killer of goldfish. It took me 10 minutes to finally trap him in a net made for little goldfish. He is about 9 or 10 inches long.

So Frick was in the bucket finally. The Bear and I drove him to Pets, Inc. which seemed approriate as a subsidiary of Monsters, Inc... where we donated Frick. The annoying part about that was, that the guy that helped us reached right in the bucket, picked Frick up, and dropped him in the nearest tank. Frick didn't even flinch!

When I returned home I finished cleaning out the remaining cloud-o-poop water and rocks and disposed of those. It was all most gross and disgusting, but hey.... it was my job to keep the tank clean, so there you are.

We are also dejunking... where'd we get all this crap???? (other than fish poop I mean) We have a mountain of stuff for a garage sale now. In my younger years, I used to collect mugs from different places I visited. For a VERY long time they have been in boxes in a closet. So I think I am going to throw them into the garage sale.

All of proceeds from the garage sale will go to help finance Drummer Boy's Europe trip next summer. Hmmmm.... I clean out fish poop... he goes to Europe...

So anyway, a few of those honeydews became honeydids today. WOO HOO!

Happy Birthday Cheez!

We love you! From Dramamama

Progress Report

Several posts ago, I mentioned a new book I started. It is set in a Navajo village in the 1800s. I had the idea for this several years ago, and made a few notes. About a year ago, I remembered the idea, and tried to find the notes, but they weren't in any of my notebooks, cubbies for ideas, or old copy or anything. I assumed it was lost.

Not long before I started the book, I was cleaning in my office and found my old Franklin Planner with one cover missing. I thumbed through it just for fun, and in the middle in the lined pages were my story notes. I was so excited.

I read through them, and decided that then was as good as any time to dive into it. I have been steadily working on it ever since. This book is just flowing out of me, and most of the time, I have no idea what I am going to write... it just comes out. I love that.

On my Black and White ands Shades of Gray book, I had an idea what the story would be, and I had chunks of it written but with huge gaps. Another book I have in the works is really just a bunch of story blobs with not much continuity. This one is flowing start to finish. I have an idea where I am going with it, but for the most part it is telling me what needs to be in it. Very cool.

I have been doing a ton of research on the Navajo culture and have found it quite fascinating. I like to do research like this to be as historically and culturally accurate as I can. Even though most of what I learn doesn't make it into the books, I sure get a lot of substance to draw from.

I was a ways into it before I really got going on the research so there are several things that need to be fixed in the earliest chapters.

Right now I am in the middle of chapter 23, and it is getting to the good part. Young boy takes on the big bad nasty guy that killed his father.

My chapters are quite short at this point, but that is fine. That gives me room for fleshing out in revisions.

If you have any desire at all to read what I have, click on the link on the right side of my blog for "Great Father of Eagles." I'm going there now to post my latest.