Wordswoman

Sunshine

California was fabulous, and so was spending mother-daughter time with Eldest Daughter. The trip did nothing to dispel her Weetzie-Bat-inspired fantasies of California as a land of eternal sunshine, purple-flowering jacaranda trees, gently waving palms and endless blue ocean. In fact it lived up to her fantasies completely. The sun shone every day. The ocean sparkled. The breezes were balmy. The world was in bloom.

So yes, come fall 2009 I expect that she'll be a California college girl. I'll buy her a webcam so we can see each other when she gets I get lonesome. We'll visit her in the dead of winter, and remind her of snow.

Rain

Two days after we got back from the trip, Dad ended up in the hospital again (getting a shunt put in to relieve pressure on his brain from the hydrocephalus, i.e. excess cerebral fluid, that developed after his second brain surgery in March). And three days after that, my stepfather landed in the hospital too (bleeding ulcer, low hemoglobin, wildly out of whack blood sugar). I have now officially Had Quite Enough Of Hospitals, Thank You Very Much.

Quotes of the week:

• Dad: "My prognosis is nine months to live. From now on, I'm right about everything."
  
• Mom: "He [stepdad] kept asking what he'd done wrong to deserve this kind of suffering."
  Me: "Did you give him a list?"
  
• Mom, to my husband Theo: "I'm sorry you had to marry into such an unhealthy family."
  Theo: "Well, the women all live."