Good Lord, the fun, it just never stops around here. So they got my dad all packed up from the little hospital and off to the nice nursing home. He got there around 5PM and so they did his intake assessments the next morning. Friday morning. By noon, mom had all his stuff packed in her car, and dad was taken by ambulance back to the big hospital. Seems they sent him to the nursing home with an active leak in one of his surgical sites, and it was something the nursing home couldn't deal with. Thank God, it's not a big emergency. My dad is holding his own and was doing fine when I left him this evening.( Read more... )

My head is still spinning from yesterday's excitement! Wow. I can't wait to get out there again! OK enough with the !s. I did get my tiny little snipet of video made into a movie, padded out to about four and a half minutes with lots of stupid chatter and still shots. I put a soundtrack on it: Bush's Machinehead, one of my all-time favorite driving tunes. Here's my goofy video:



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Doesn't that look inviting?

AWESOME! Such an overused word, but the only one that applies to my afternoon ride yesterday at Barber Motorsports Park. Despite all my boasting and promising beforehand, I came away from the afternoon with almost nothing in pictures! No photo of me in my helmet, no video footage from the track, just some stills and video taken while we milled around before time to ride.( Read more... )

Yeah, I'll get over it eventually, but for the moment, I'm soooo excited about the little activity I've got planned for this afternoon. I found myself looking for Porsches out on the road today, something I don't usually waste precious brain cells doing. These two kept me company on the Alabama side of the trip:



I hope they're cool with my plan to completely geek out with my digital camera tomorrow. I doubt I'll be the first. Hmm. What to wear??????( Read more... )

Back in Atlanta for the weekend. Decatur, actually. My dad is doing fine, though the craziness continues there. I was actually sleeping in when the phone rang at 9:30 Saturday morning. It was ExFelonBro's wife calling to say that ExFelonBro had been admitted to the hospital through the emergency room. Double pneumonia. And an alarmingly enlarged heart. He's getting IV fluids and antibiotics, along with breathing treatments. Cardiac consult to come. Not sure when I last talked about him. I think he's featured in an old entry called White Christmas. I'll see if I can find it. ( Read more... )

Over the past few weeks, I've been on a mission to find a new purse, and a new wallet. My teeny-tiny $9.99 Target purse has outlived all my expectations for it, and my government-issue credential holder is a poor substitute for a wallet, but that's what I've been using for the past five years. I made false starts with both the purse and the wallet, but was much happier on the second go-round. Check 'em out...then check out pictures and video from the awesome Inman Park Festival, links inside.( Read more... )

The first time he does it, I am scared to death. My father is driving the old Chevy, and I am sitting in his lap. I am five years old. He takes his hands from the steering wheel and covers his face, saying, "Take the wheel! I have to sneeze!" I take the wheel, and I drive. My father is strangely prone to longer and longer sneezing fits over the years. Eventually, I learn to steer from the passenger seat.( Read more... )

One of my long-time dreams is to do some driving on a race course. Fast driving. In a fast car. A Porsche, maybe.

For many years, I could not have made this dream come true, because I literally would not fit into the driver's seat of a racing car. Nor into the stock driving suit. So when I got serious about losing weight, I decided that one of the first things I'd do, once at goal, was to take a race driving course.

In the intervening years, I moved from Atlanta, home to both the Atlanta Motor Speedway and Road Atlanta, to Alabama. Yes, the infamous Talledega track is here, but they didn't have any courses that interested me out there. I have been keeping an eye on courses at Road Atlanta for quite some time. And then...and then! Then came the Barber Motorsports Park, right outside Birmingham. And I can't believe I didn't pick up on this sooner - it's home to the Porsche Sport Driving School! ( Read more... )

Of course, I've calmed down since that last entry. Sure feels good to vent. Sometimes I worry about the impression I leave when I cut loose like that. As you might imagine, that stuff comes much more easily on the written page than it does in real time. Would you believe I am actually pretty low-key and easy-going in person? Most of the time, anyway.( Read more... )

Dream car! 1972-73 Porsche 911. Schweet! Seen on Ga Hwy 78 west this past Saturday.

Sorry, more hospital crap. I'm up making some notes to have in hand at the hospital tomorrow morning, and I'm kind of wound up. The ridiculousness of the hospital system is really getting out of hand. Follow along, if you will...( Read more... )

It was so hard to get all the big birthday weekend arrangements in place, and even harder to completely undo them to be here in Atlanta today. But it still turned out to be a great day. The Joan Baez tickets were sold within ten minutes of our letting folks know they were available. I gave up on the football vendor stand. Logistics=impossible. I'll hope to catch a meal or cup of coffee with my BestGalPal who was going to spend the weekend with me at home. So that was all fairly easily undone.

Today, my father came through his surgery very well, and was talking by the time they got him back to his room. No trouble coming back off the ventilator, no blood pressure problems or any other problems. So far, no fever. He did ask to see my identification, and eventually he fell asleep somewhat distrusting of the strange woman claiming to be his daughter sat there at his bedside. If that's the worst of it, halleluia. We assume this is the lingering effects of the general anesthesia. ( Read more... )

Dogwood on the banks of the Black Warrior River, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

I'm just going to jump right in here. I usually start here with a title, or at least a title in mind. Not tonight. Everything's all over the place.

OK well there's my title!

Warning: There is some gross hospital talk below. Consider yourself warned!
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I've been meaning to update you guys on the fate of the formerly-front-porch kitties. Remember I got the two babies into the house last October and we were going through the very slow process of taming them. In January, while I was away in Atlanta, they escaped, but stayed around the house. Under the house, actually. Along with the one we call Big Fuzzy, and sometimes Old Crusty. Well the babies are growing! Shorty, who's close to a year old now, has gotten to be as big as Big Fuzzy. We suspect Big Fuzzy is a she, and that she's pregnant (drats!). Little Miss Fuzzy is the littlest one of the bunch by far. And she's looking kind of nasty and unkempt in her hind area. I suspect she's unwell. She doesn't come out much, but she's still around. ( Read more... )

Hello, friends! Long time!

Things are pretty good. I've been crazy-busy everywhere, back and forth and round and round. But my dad is doing so much better, and that makes the craziness entirely tolerable. The day started with a goofy spontaneous dance party in my dad's hospital room, which I later learned was a sorely needed bright spot for several people. ( Read more... )

My father (front) and his older brother in some traditional garb, around 1938 or so.
Click this photo to see a few more vintage family shots.

The days seem to be flying by. Has it been a week since I last updated? It's Wednesday and I'm home until Saturday, then it's back to Atlanta for the weekend, maybe through Monday. Things continue to rock along OK for my father. We had our big "family m33ting" at the hospital, and it was really helpful. We are still having to fight incredibly stupid battles (still with the bladd3r!) but despite all the big and small things that are just screwed up, my father is slowly improving. ( Read more... )

It's all about the weather here this weekend. Friday night, I dropped DreamGuy off in Egan's Bar, where folks were watching the Alabama-Mississippi basketball game that was underway at the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta. I left DreamGuy and had to go to work doing top secret gubmint things from 8 until gosh, we finished at 12:30 this morning. During that time, as you've probably heard by now, a tornado hit the Georgia Dome. The video and audio are pretty awesome! Sorry no links, as usual, I'm rushing around right now.( Read more... )

Yeah, one of those online quizzes, because Dr. Scott (check out his new digs!) asked his readers to participate. I don't know nuthin bout no D&D, but I took the little chunk of time required to answer the questions and I enjoyed the results, though I confess many of the details are rather lost on me. Enjoy, Dr. Scott! ( Read more... )

Me and Lamb0

Can you believe it? I am going to write about a really nice day! The weather was gorgeous, cool and clear. I had arranged yesterday for us to go visit Lamb0 this afternoon, so we made the call, and off we went. We met DreamGuy's parents along the way and they followed us up, since they had been saying they'd wanted to visit Lamb0, too. Off we went, way out into the country. ( Read more... )

The waiting room at the big hospital was under construction when we returned. Wonder where they expect us to hang out now?

From email to a friend...

Gawd, it's been so awful with the hospital crap that I cannot even bring myself to write about it. I'm back home in Alabama for a few days, probably going back to Atlanta for just a couple of days next week (fingers crossed). The bad stuff is not about my dad, either - he's had some big scary bumps such as this trip back to the ICU this week, but overall, he seems to be slowly improving. It's been dealing with the hospital administrative crap and their stupid secret rules and the few assholes we have encountered. ( Read more... )

This is how patients get from one hospital to another.

Where was I? I am really tired, yall. Bone weary. My dad is back at the ICU at Hospital D, the big medical center where he started out. The psycho doctor had calmed down this morning and everything went fine. She busted her royal butt to get my father a CT scan and an ICU bed, no minor feat given that there were lines three deep in three different directions with people waiting to get into this unit.

I'm sitting in the waiting room, having just consumed a delicious dinner of brunswick stew (Matty's Rib Shack, yum) in my car before heading back in here to try and find out what's going on. When we left the other place, they said we'd find out what was going on when we got here. Once we got here, we got blank stares and big old "I don't knows" with regard to the scheduling of a "minor" procedure to insert a drain into my dad's abdomen to clear a pocket of infection that's developed there. The CT showed this abscess, but no actual leak was evident. The stuff came from a leak, but it may already have healed up. Really there's no way to be sure except the tried and true "wait and see" once this drain is in.

Must get going but let me explain the title of this entry. My dad has been much more with it today, feeling much better, talking, even smiling and laughing. Once he was settled into his new ICU room, he called me to his bedside (the usual way, by hollering, "Eileen!" - my mother's name) and motioned for me to lean close. He whispered, "I'm ready to go. Go tell them to please bring us the check so that we can pay the bill and leave."