agoodwinsmith | They got home yesterday at 4:30 pm.

So. It has all been a little overwrought this last while.

I had a two weeks' off and spent the first week spending a lot of money I haven't yet made. Ah ha ha. (My lenses are insane - my astigmatism and whatnot is so bad that my lenses are never less that $400 - and that so does *not* include the frames.) Okay, yes, I bought a wireless laptop, whee. :) And I bought two new pairs of shoes and had three more pairs resoled. Argle.

Then I spent nearly a week at my parent's place. It was beautiful and very hot. They have air conditioning and it was terrific. They also invited people over for the big meal of doom, and had to spend the next day recovering because they are not only no longer in their thirties, but they are no longer in their fifties. My SOGP drove up, and I bused up, and we are still talking to one another, so it was a win (last year it was not so good because SOGP came by bus with me - and he HATES the bus).

Then, on the morning I left, my Dad had his heart attack. He has been waiting for this heart attack for 25 years. Our family tend to be short dumpy fatties with heart troubles, and none of the men in Dad's family had previously survived their fifties. Dad's dad was dead at 56 and had been ill in bed from a stoke for a long time prior. Dad's oldest brother died on the operating table at 46 - there wasn't enough heart left to do any bypasses on. My Dad's second oldest brother died at 52 after bypass surgery in his late forties - and he only hung on that long because it meant that his wife qualified for a larger pension. One of my cousins died about five years ago at 50. And so on. My Dad has basically been feeling the fine edge of the sword of Damocles on his neck since the 70's.

He wouldn't let us help him but sent Mom and I off to put me on the bus. About 15 minutes after we had gone, he called a neighbour, who is a paramedic, and he took one look at Dad and called the ambulance. Fortunately, as soon as Dad realized his *spell* was probably a little bit more than just hard work in the heat on an empty stomach (he was on the roof cleaning out the gutters, waiting for me to be ready, so that he and Mom could then have breakfast in town after they got me on the bus), he took an aspirin.

So. Dad was in the hospital from the 31st of July onward. Because of lame-brained efforts at "rationalizing"the health care service, in order to get the angiogram test and the stent surgery in a timely fashion he had to stay in the hospital the whole time. If he had gone home, he would have lost his place in line and would have ended up waiting months for the angiogram, and who knows how long for the stents. I could rant about the gutting of the health care system by the current bad man in office in BC, but maybe another time.

So, my Mom was in and out of town twice a day during that time, since she spent much of her time with Dad. Then, when she would get home in the evening, there would be people visiting and phoning, so she was getting pretty frazzled.

When Dad was sheduled for surgery in Victoria, Mom drove down to stay with us one night, and then I went with her to Victoria so that I could see Dad after the surgery, and then they wouldn't have to stop in Vancouver on their way home. Important because that would add an additional 3 to 4 hours to an already 10 hour day for the drive home.

I think having me around helps Mom a bit - since we can natter on and on, which we both find comforting. But I also think that having me around stresses my parents because they have never really come to terms with the idea that I am older than five, and so they feel they have to protect me from everything. If I start to do something, they both feel the need to leap up immediately and help me. Not that either of them can sit still for two minutes anyways, but you know what I mean.

They got home yesterday at 4:30 pm, and I can only hope that they spent the whole day vegging out, but my money would be on them doing housework and getting groceries and entertaining well-wishers.

That would be my folks.