uncle update

for some insane reason, the doctors thought that uncle art was a-ok and gave him their fly-away-home stamp of approval, just a week and a day after he was admitted with a probable chance of death. smart move, eh?

now he is home and dealing with the following:

• fractured jaw on both sides [won't need wiring unless he (1) moves too much and moves the bones out of place, or (2) is in so much pain that he can't tough it out until everything heals]
• hip bone drama [the ball on his joint had to be replaced entirely in surgery, so now he will be able to walk but not without serious arthritis-like pain]
• broken ulna and radius [the two lower arm bones...aka he will have a cast past the elbow and up towards the shoulder]
• internal head injuries that are oozing out of his ear [last week blood was coming out of his ear canal, but despite the fact that they have "fixed" that problem, fluids of an unknown origin have taken place of the blood. yummy]

so, even though he is home with his family and past the point of "will likely die," he is still in dire need of prayer and healing. unfortunately, his numerous near-death experiences have done nothing whatsoever to spark his interest in the more important matters of Christ and salvation.

i love this man and i am praying. but seriously, what a punk.

kthx

reasons why everyone should love my cat:

• he plays fetch with hairties and plays in the toilet

• he operates under several nom de plumes: sam, samwise, samsonite, and samson

• he is terrified of water in large amounts yet still defies death by drinking from the pool

• he is a true inspiration for witty captions

• he lets you put scotch tape on the bottoms of his paws when you're bored

• but most importantly, when you look over your lappy after a bad day, this is what you'll see:

this cat is off da hook

(figuratively, of course)

it's not his fault he has better hair, janet

THE SETTING: checkout lanes 1, 2, and 3 at Country Market. it's late in the evening and the store is quiet and almost empty.

THE PLAYERS**:

JANET: smelly, grumpy, intolerant old lady who prefers to shop from the convenience of an electric cart.
BILLY RAY: the nine-ish year-old grandson of Janet
CARRIE: friendly, attractive cashier on register 2
CASHIER 2: unimportant cashier on register 3
CASHIER 1: even more unimportant cashier on register 1. The focus of this story centers on her register so she is listed in this list for explanation purposes only
**all names and have been changed (or invented, i should say) save for mine, of course.

FADE IN, START THIS SCENE.

[Enter stage right: Janet and Billy Ray approach register 1 with their prospective groceries. As Janet unloads groceries, Billy Ray pauses at the magazine rack and picks up this month's edition of People]

BILLY RAY: Grandma!! [shows her the magazine with interest and enthusiasm, asking her without words if he can have it]

JANET: Don't touch that trash!!! [Janet emphasizes "touch" as if the magazine has some contagious disease that could kill Billy Ray]

BILLY RAY: [mumbles defensively, his excitement waning]

JANET: I don't care what you say. That may look like a man now, but he was born a woman!! [emphasizes "woman" as if to say that by holding the magazine, Billy Ray could turn into a woman and be forevermore known as Billy Jean]

CASHIER 2: [whispers to Carrie] Who is on the magazine?

CARRIE: [looks incredulously at the cover of a similar magazine at her register] . . . it's Keith Urban!!


[end scene]

update

uncle art's girlfriend found affordable tickets, so she and the grandparents are in texas with him. but despite their presence, we don't actually know all that much. he's going to live, that much is clear, but we still don't know the extent of the damage. no one, doctors included, seems to know what in the world is going on (but then again, we are getting our information from some exhausted senior citizens with limited cell phone minutes set to roaming in texas). last night i chuckled, imagining grandma's exasperated face once they realized there were no hotel rooms because of a local jehovah's witness convention. oh, the timing. :o)

they've started surgeries and hopefully everything is on the up and up. we were really anxious on friday morning; he had started bleeding internally somewhere in his head, and the blood started to run out of his ears, but i think they've got everything under control now.

he is responsive and they've started to wean him off the respirator. so far, so good.

thank you for your continued prayers. this guy needs all the help he can get. it is not his first freak encounter with a semi-truck, however. he once had an entire cab fall off the jack as he changed a tire. he managed to survive that near-death-or-amputation-at-the-least experience, so i'm thinking the punk is going to pull through.

and while we are on the subject of punks, i'd like to say that the makers of my new shoes fall into that category: punks. after just a month of use, my flats fell apart--quite literally--while i was bagging groceries yesterday. so not only was i bagging groceries, but i was bagging groceries while trying to walk with soles that had gone all robert e. lee and seceded from the rest of the shoes (receded, conceded...). pssht

please pray

my uncle is in desperate need of prayer right now (yet again). he drives semi's, and today he was in the-middle-of-nowhere, TX, tightening the strap on his rig with a crow bar and it (the crowbar) jumped back into his face and fractured his jaw, knocking him backwards onto the cement of the highway, fracturing his skull.

being the stubborn idiot that he sometimes can be, he got up and managed to deliver his load, fractured bones and all. but afterwards he called home (across the country in scranton, pennsylvania) to let us know he was sick (throwing up, dizzy . . . aka symptoms of a serious concussion).

by the time the paramedics found him (and we have no idea how they did), he was no longer breathing. we have no idea how long he hadn't been breathing, but we know it had to have been awhile, because he was unresponsive at the hospital, and his brainswelling was so dangerous that they had to induce a coma.

so now the doctors in amarillo, texas are telling my grandma that she needs to fly down there immediately, to talk to him and try and coax him out of this unresponsive state. but a single ticket costs nearly $900 and they don't have the means to afford this.

so please pray for uncle art. pray that the doctors will be granted wisdom and steady hands. and pray that my grandparents can find a way to get to their only son. my uncle has some serious and chronic health problems as it is and i'm not sure how much more his fragile body can handle.

please pray.

an answer. i has one.

after getting laughed at by my friends' mother, i now realize that some crucial information was left out of the previous post:

1. i have already read this book in hardback form. three times.
2. i may or may not own this book, in hardback form.
3. i am on the waiting list for the (audio)book version at the library.

sorry for holding out on you guys. apparently those three facts are crucial factors of the final decision, and now have thus lead me to option number three: wait for it at the library . . .

. . . i never considered the option of being patient a viable option . . . oops

a dilemma. i has one.

moral dilemma of the summer:
let's just say you want to buy an audiobook (yes, an audiobook. don't judge, just move on to the actual dilemma).

ok, so audiobook. do you spend $31.99 of your $40 itunes credit and buy it from itunes? or do you spend $50 of your $50 border's gift card and buy it from border's?

my logic:
i am leaning towards the gift card. because even if you spend one-hundred percent of it on this (audio)book, you can still buy books. you can always justify spending money on books (english lit. major, hello!). and if you use my itunes, you can only buy 8 more songs because you refuse to use a credit card on itunes (limits your spending that would otherwise be off the charts of out-of-controlitude).

and of course, this is only a hypothetical situtation (hence the usage of "you" instead of "i"). because what kind of loser buys audiobooks, let alone spends time debating about where to buy them.



. . .



. . . but seriously, what should i do?

insights into my soul, #152

i love you've got mail, so if that title makes no sense to you, go get yourself a $3 education and rent it...

i'm finding that all of my current thoughts that i would have written about here are too numerous and too messy, so i'll sum it all up for now with one of my favorite quotes from a great author:

"First of all, let me say that I do believe in true love. But I also deeply believe in the complexity, variety, and downright insanity of love. A lucky person loves hundreds of people in their lives, all in different ways: family love, friendship love, romantic love, all in so many shades and depths. I don’t think you lose your ability—or right—to have true love by loving more than one person. In part, this is true because you never love two people in the same way. Another part is that, if you’re lucky, you learn to love better with practice. The bottom line is that you have to choose who you are going to commit to—that’s the foundation of true love, not a lack of other options" (stephenie meyer).