Nuthin’ but an H thang, Baybay…

My sisters and I kept combing Facebook just to hear something new all day yesterday. Em and Aunt Cindy posted several times and it helps to have those little details when you can’t be there in person. I keep trying to picture my Auntie Bon sedated in her hospital room but I can’t. I can’t imagine her in any other way than how she is normally. When you first see her, she has a way of making you feel like she’s been waiting to see you for years even if she saw you last week. In my mind, I hear her laughing – her signature cackle. You can say one small sentimental thing to her and tears will spring right to her eyes. Whenever someone in our family has some major injury or ailment, not only is she there in an instant, but she’s the one we go to for counsel (she’s a trained nurse). This is how I picture her, not immobile, not in a hospital bed.

And all we can do is wait. I know she needs this time to heal…but I’m so impatient and angry that this happened to her.

I keep going back to Devon’s bridal shower a couple weekends ago. It was so nice to spend some time with her not only at the shower, but afterward. After all the hard work she (and the other aunties) put into the shower, she wanted to reward herself with a margarita. In true form, she coerced my mom and me to go along with her plans and we ended up at the Liffey on West 7th Street. None of us had been on their rooftop patio before and the weather was perfect for such a spot. One problem: they had margaritas, but no blender. In her mind, Auntie Bon had pictured a perfectly blended margarita in her hand on this patio and teased and tortured the staff about not having a blender there. She had all of us -staff and fellow patrons- laughing at her “plight”. I talked her and my mom into a Ginger & Jameson, and she was finally appeased. I remember sitting there thinking this is such a great day. The photo in the previous post is of that moment.

So, it’s with a very heavy heart that I wait and hope.

Originally uploaded by Pookareena

My Uncle Tom called me tonight to let me know that my Auntie Bon had been in a severe car accident in Duluth. We don’t know a ton about what happened, other than that someone cut her off and made her veer off the road into a pole. The pole was hit with such force that the impact broke it in half. She was brought to St. Mary’s in short order with a major head injury. The doctors performed surgery to ease her brain swell. They induced a coma and are keeping an eye on the swelling and a clot in her frontal lobe.

My mom (her sister) is on a trip and I wasn’t able to reach her. I left a voicemail on her cell phone, even though I know she doesn’t normally pick them up when she’s overseas. I guess my sister called Delta to relay a message as well.

I’m grateful to know that my Aunt Cindy is there with her tonight. It’s really my only source of comfort right now if there is one. Emmy seems to be hanging in there and she’s being strong for her dad. I talked with Uncle Doug briefly…we mostly just cried together over the phone as he could barely get words out. I called my sisters and my dad. My Aunt Jan called to say a prayer. I cried myself to sleep and got a few hours even.

And now we wait.

Accidents happen:(

Originally uploaded by Pookareena

On Saturday afternoon, I begged Adam to take me to Ikea. I’ve been wanting to replace our china hutch forever and saw something that might work on a previous visit there with my sister. Of course, I needed Adam’s truck if I had any hope of carting a large item home.

We were detoured southbound onto Penn Avenue in Richfield because 35W was closed near 62. Our topic of discussion in the car was fate versus chance, which turned out to be pretty ironic. We were in the right lane on Penn, the left lane was somewhat backed up with cars waiting to make a left turn at the light. In an instant, a car came darting toward us from the left. Adam tried to avoid the impact by turning further to the right where there was a driveway entrance to a parking lot, but to no avail. The guy hit our front driver’s side wheel, which took the brunt of the impact. We were jostled and I was flung into the passenger side window.

Apparently, the dude who hit us was in the northbound lane waiting for the backed up line of cars in the left lane to clear so that he could make a left turn into that parking lot. The left lane didn’t clear, but a car held back so as to give him room to turn in front of them. Of course, he didn’t wait for the right lane to also clear – or he just didn’t see us.

Adam could barely get his door to open. He asked if I was okay and then got out to survey the damage and talk to the other guy. I was a little shaken and slowly took my seatbelt off and began to get out of the car. Another man came up to the car and handed me his business card – he indicated that his family saw the whole accident and would serve as witnesses.

Then I heard some yelling. The dude who hit us was yelling “I just got this car!” and accused Adam of causing the accident. Adam was trying to explain why it wasn’t his fault and it was starting to get heated. The witness in who gave me his card went over to intervene – he yelled at the guy who hit us, saying that he was a witness and that he would testify against him. So then the dude who hit us got into his car and began to try to leave the scene. My husband stood in front of the guy’s car to prevent him from doing so. At this point, I was about to grab Adam by the ear and drag him to the parking lot.

Thank god the police showed up. They calmed everyone down and began to assess the dude who hit us. There was clearly something a little off about him and they began questioning him about his medications. He told them he is treated regularly for bipolar disease and depression and began to cry. I felt so bad for him! He didn’t know how to deal with an accident, that much was clear. They explained to him what he did wrong and you could tell he was really worried about “getting in trouble.” He came over to us, explained his illnesses and begged us not to sue him. I explained “That’s why we have insurance, and they’ll take care of everything – it’ll be okay.” He apologized again and again and told us a couple more times about his illnesses.

The police were great. They arranged for a tow truck, they gave the dude who hit us a ride home and took down all the details of the accident. Matt was nice enough to pick us up and drive us home.

We never did make it to Ikea, since we were left with only my car and the GTO. However, we did go to Target and ended up with some new folding patio chairs – which really improved our spirits. We grilled, had a fire, toasted marshmallows and enjoyed some Jameson & Gingers. Aside from a few scratches, bruises and seatbelt burns, we were just fine. And for that, we were so grateful.

Originally uploaded by Pookareena

If this alert were real, monkeys would fly down from the sky and bite you on the ankles… ooonly kidding. Sorta.

I’m trying to find an easier way to stick photos into my posts. When I went to my current version of WordPress, they removed the cute little buttons that made posting photos simple and flexible (the new Upload/Insert button kinda bites). So, Adam wrote me a teensy bit of code which I have to copy, paste and edit with each entry to get my photos to post. Even when I do that, I’m not completely happy with how they post in relation to the text. Once I get a photo added to an entry, the WordPress tools for controlling the space around the photo are not very easy to use (at least not for a simpleton like me). There’s a lot of trial and error depending on how the text falls around the photo. DISCLAIMER: I completely concede that this is probably my fault because I’m not talented in formatting, and my lack of technical skillz are likely a cause of my pain.

Regardless, I may have a different method to try. I just setup my blog with Flickr and posted the photo you see at the right. Using the BlogThis feature on an individual photo in my Flickr account, a little box flips open, asks me for a title and some text and wah-lah: the result is basically what you’re looking at now. It’s a limited interface, so I have to login to my admin account at WordPress to actually add tags and text formatting. Which is fine. The other thing is that I like to switch up where I post photos in an entry – sometimes I’m feeling left, sometimes right – you never know. Flickr seems to offer a standard template for posting. Given, it’s a template you can customize, but it’s still a template. I need to dig further into options for my ever-changing whims. I realize this function won’t completely fix my text spacing issue, but I think the first attempt looks, well, good enough. The main thing is that it’s much easier and quicker than messing with the HTML.

I’m a pretty regular poster to Flickr, so I’m hoping the side effect of this is that I’m inspired to blog more in conjunction with my photos. Wouldn’t that be nice?

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.