Six and a half months

I'm sitting here trying to remember what has happened in the last six and a half months that has prevented me from writing, and because there is no nice, neat way to write it all out with smooth transitions and all that jazz, I'll just list it all.

1. Work. That's the biggest thing. Even though I usually get home by about 3:30, I insist on cooking actual food from real ingredients for dinner, so there's not much time for anything else.

2. Leah and I spent a week in Atlanta in early August, where she had surgery for endometriosis. There were some highs, like when she was so hopped up on the after-effects of anesthesia that she couldn't find the button to press for morphine-on-demand, and she whined to the nurse that she felt like she had to hit the button with a hammer. And there were a few lows, like when she had a dystonic reaction to the morphine and her whole left side cramped up and twisted her like a pretzel.

3. Also in August, Mansquared left for his junior year of college, which will forever be known as "the year God made it clear he should not play soccer." There were several injuries, one of which involved a knee, but the mother of all junior-year injuries was when he was moving forward with great speed, planted his left foot, his left knee locked, and all the forward momentum of 192 pounds centered on the back of his hip socket, which did not react favorably. At 21 years old, he broke his hip. We joke that we're going to buy him a cane and a membership to AARP. So now he's walking around with a small chunk of loose hip socket held in place by the ligament. The specialist at UVA Sports Medicine says it will heal itself if he will just take it easy for 6 weeks. (Ha!)

And may I just comment on the wonder of a CT scan? The below photo was taken at UVA in about 6 minutes. The doctor pulled up this 3-D image, and with a click of the mouse, he was rotating it in different directions, showing us the break from multiple angles. It's the oblong piece just to the right of the femoral head, about 3 cm long and 1.5 cm wide. Amazing.

4. Multitudes came to my house for Thanksgiving, including the beautiful grandbabies, four of the five children (one with husband and aforementioned babies), brothers and sisters-in-law, parents, nieces and nephews with spouses and children, and a few extras we picked up along the way. It was loud and crazy but so fun and a wonderful break from work. So wonderful, in fact, that today at my desk I had a very hard time concentrating. It will take a few days to get back in my groove, I think.

And now I'm wondering how four things can take up six and a half months.

Here's hoping I remember to write before next June.