Smiling Mom

There are huge fires attac­king San Diego right now.  Over­night these fires have become much, much worse than the fires that hit San Diego County four years ago.  And those fires devas­ta­ted the area.

Schools are shut down.  Free­ways are clo­sed.  Hou­ses near where I grew up are bur­ning down.  Man­da­tory eva­cua­tions are underway.

I am very worried.

Some of my family has eva­cua­ted their homes, some are pac­ked and ready to go.  Please pray for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple that have been and have to be evacuated.

If you have a few minu­tes, please head over to A View From Here and read Bill’s post about one of our fallen heroes, Cor­po­ral Nicho­las Manou­kin.

Yes­ter­day I was wor­king yard duty during lunch when the follo­wing situa­tion took place:

Seven year old girl and her entou­rage walk up to Smi­ling Mom.

A mem­ber of her entou­rage speaks (Because a seven year old girl never tells the teacher her pro­blems.  That’s what her friends are for!)

Entou­rage 1:  Mrs. Deeeeeeee, Jonie has a red spot on her toouuunnnge.

SM: Let me see it.

Jonie opens her mouth and a second mem­ber of her entou­rage points to the spot.

SM: Oh, that’s just a taste bud.  It’s a bit swo­llen, but it will get bet­ter soon.

E1: What, are you a doc­tor or something?

SM: Uh, no.  That’s just com­mon sense.

Jonie and the entou­rage turn around and begin to chuckle.

E1 loo­king at Jonie and gig­gles: Wha­te­ver!  She doesn’t know what she’s tal­king about.  She’s not even a doctor!!

SM: Hey!!!  I heard that!

Hubby went to the shoul­der spe­cia­list yes­ter­day and he told us what we already knew… surgery.

Appa­rently Hubby has a tear in both the front and back of his shoul­der. Dr. Cuts-A-Lot’s hoping to per­form this sur­gery arth­ros­co­picly. This makes Hubby happy, as one of his three tat­toos is on the upper half of his right arm.

So anywho… now we are wai­ting for the city’s disa­bi­lity board to approve the sur­gery so we can go ahead and sche­dule it. We’re hoping for him to be in the ope­ra­ting room in the next two to three weeks.

Here’s the kic­ker. His reco­very is sup­pose to take a mini­mum of 5 months. Let me repeat. F.I.V.E. M.O.N.T.H.S. That’s five months after sur­gery. We are hea­ding into month two right now.

So my math skills as a second grade teacher come in handy when I cal­cu­late the follo­wing: 2 months + 5 months = a mini­mum of 7 months together.

We’ll see how cute Hubby thinks I am after our stint at home. Pretty soon I think he’ll be beg­ging me to begin sub­bing in our local school on my days home from work.

Five. Months. Little does he know (hi hon!) he’s get­ting five days of hea­ling before I re-institute the Honey Do List.

Dr. Cuts-A-Lot told him that he’s requi­red to be in a sling for a full six weeks post-op. Do you know what Hubby said after he told me this? “Looks like we’ll be spen­ding the whole Christ­mas vaca­tion down at your parents house!” (I think I jum­ped for joy, just a little bit! OK, a lot. I love being home with my family!)

So this is the offi­cial announ­ce­ment Mom and Dad, we’ll down for the holi­days. For weeks. Like ten. Pre­pare for the chaos which is my children!