I'll take what I can get. . .

Last night was the 2nd Sunday Family Dinner of 2013.  Quite unexpectedly, Curtis is home right now and this matters because I was a bit trepidatious about starting them without him but these things take care of themselves and although it will be hard the first few weeks we meet without him when he goes back to sea, I am very grateful that he is here now.  We had everyone present and accounted for and ate spaghetti and meat sauce with salad and garlic bread.  These are not fancy meals.  They are meant to bring us together and they do.  Last night after we ate, Ayden and Grandma were engrossed in an iPad game called 4 Pics, 1 Word.  Hollis and Grandpa were chatting and I noticed a couple of the boys were out on the deck out front.  I went out to join them.

As a side note, I have been struggling with the empty nest thing off and on for a while now.  It's cliche but the fact is, going from being needed to not being needed is tough.  Our grocery bill is lower, but we only have each other to prepare meals for.  Our light bill is lower, but we don't have power-using, noisemakers in the house either.  We are very comfortable alone together but I miss being a mom - A LOT!

Another side note: also on the cliche list is "A daughter's a daughter for all of her life, a son's a son til he takes a wife."  Two of the boys have long term stable relationships with wonderful women whom I adore.  I think the old saying is just a bit off because adult self-sufficient men, even single ones, just don't have much need of Mom either.  There are times when this situation makes me very sad.  Where did the time go?!?  How could I have squandered all their growing up years?  I have a friend who is in her early 30's and last week she got a stomach bug.  She has a husband and two elementary school aged kids of her own but on Facebook she posted "I want my MMMMOOOOMMMMMMYYY!"  I told her that hers was a lucky mom.  My guys would no more have that thought or ever say it out loud than the man in the moon.  I know to be thankful for their self-sufficient lives.  Not every parent of a son has this and I am aware of that.  I just have to work hard to not feel left out of what's going on in their worlds.  I will never get them off my radar. They are my children and I will worry about them until I die but I also must realize that I am not on their radar in a reciprocal way.  They are guys!  But, back to last night. . .

When I went out on the deck, we chatted for a while and then the other boys came out too.  We laughed as we talked about current pig hunting stories and past adventures with friends from school years.  I kept thinking other adults would come out there too but they didn't.  I had about 30-45 glorious minutes with just my guys and it was WONDERFUL!  They don't need me anymore but I love it when they laugh together.  I need that.  

Morgan is just a few weeks away from parenthood.  He and Des are going to be so awesome at it.  Des already is and it is great to see Morgan in the step-dad role with it all coming so easily to him.  Newborns are a new area for him but he is so very happy that this little guy is coming into his world and it is great to see the joy in his eyes when he talks about assembling cribs and registering at the hospital.  No, I won't be needed again the way Des is right now but hopefully in a year or so there will be a toddler who runs to see me and wants my time.  Will that fill some of this emptiness?

. . .and then things got weird. . .

I have a saying that goes like this:  You never know when you wake up in the morning what God has planned for you.  It's not deep but some days are more of a surprise than others.  Take, for instance, this past Thursday.  I am a fairly new employee at a local credit union and I am still in training.  To be more specific, I was in Training Camp last week and the culmination of Training Camp is a field trip to one of the CU branches and lunch out.  Wouldn't you know, the branch for half of us to visit is the one that is walking distance from my house so of course, I volunteered to drive.  We took 2 cars for 6 people and left for the branch about 10:15.  I was kind of excited to see the "inside" of the branch and who doesn't love a field trip.  As fate would have it, I also gave blood that morning in the bloodmobile.  I have been giving blood at any opportunity I had since I was 17.  I give every time a blood bank comes to my place of employment and I have gone to the blood bank in New Braunfels a few times between employers so it's about as routine to me as anything.  After my donation on Thursday, I drank my sports drink and ate some peanut butter cookies.  I had had my usual breakfast so all was in order.  Back to the branch.  We were in the lobby of the branch being told by the manager of the branch about how members accessed their safe deposit boxes and it occurred to me that I probably ought to sit down.  I didn't exactly feel bad; I just wanted to sit.  Shortly thereafter, we moved into one of the offices for a demo of the video conferencing that allows members to open accounts and close on loans and I again expressed that I probably ought to sit down.  I began to feel really strange.  It was not hot in the room but I was sweating and apparently most of the color had drained from my face because my pregnant instructor took a granola bar from her purse and offered it to me.  It did not look good and I could not eat it.  A few seconds later, I fainted.  A first for me!  I was sitting down in a rolling office chair so I did not fall but I sure don't remember being moved from the office to the lobby area at all.  

I came around pretty quickly but it was too late - my co-trainees, instructor and the branch manager were all pretty freaked out.  They had already called 911, credit union headquarters and Hollis.  The fire station is only about a mile away so the fire truck and ambulance were there in very few minutes.  By this time, I was awake but shaky and apologizing profusely for being the problem child of the field trip.  The EMT's hooked me up to a heart monitor, took some blood for a blood sugar reading and took my blood pressure.  Head EMT guy said he was going to stand me up, take another BP reading and that would determine if I was going to finish the rest of the branch tour.  I flunked that test big time.  They thought it best to take me to an ER and I was not in a position to argue.  

Hollis could have come and gotten me but he would want me to get checked out.  One of my coworkers could have taken me and my car the very short distance to my house but that would have meant they had to come off the clock and I didn't think I could ask them to do that and I wasn't really sure I wanted to be home alone for the afternoon so I went with the EMT recommendation and let them put me on the ambulance.  

I have only been in an ambulance on two other occasions.  I rode with my handicapped uncle once from his nursing home to Silver City for some tests and Harris and I rode in two in one day when he was moving from Augusta GA to San Antonio when he was hurt in Iraq.  Never have I been a patient in one.  I talked to Hollis before we left the branch and assured him that I was aware and coping and that I expected the ER would put some fluids back into me and I would call him when it was time for me to go home.  He also agreed that I should go get checked out.  It's about a 15 minute drive from the branch to the New Braunfels hospital.  When you go by ambulance, you avoid the ER waiting room - you know, the one filled with people with the flu.  That was a plus.  I was seen shortly by a doctor who ordered some blood work and as I had predicted, they started an new IV (the EMT had started one in the ambulance) and I just wanted to sleep.  Once it was determined that I was in working order, I was released about 3:30.  Hollis had come to the ER and we went to get me some lunch and then went home.  The doctor said I should stay home Friday but I am headed back to work tomorrow with no lasting effects that I am aware of from the adventure.  I did call the blood bank on Friday to let them know about the "reaction" - their word, not mine and they said it would be noted.  It was not at all the Thursday I had anticipated when I woke up.  It's okay if it doesn't happen again.