That kind of week

So usually we hear from our family once a week by texting or talking to them.  This week has been a flurry of calls and texts as all of this happened:

1.  Stepdaughter broke up (finally yay!) with boyfriend of 3 years.  We could all see it coming but she finally pulled the plug.  She is sad and misses us but is otherwise fine.  Hubby and I tried to temper our excitement when speaking with her.  She has created a whole new life for herself including supporting herself (September 1 payments stopped to her from us) and needed to break that last tie as her boyfriend didn't work and had basically sponged off her for the last year as she was working a part-time job while finishing highschool.



2.  Stepson #2 rear-ended someone, thankfully no injuries but he killed his vehicle.  He intends to go to College September 2017 and is currently working where he can't take a bus.  The accident was his fault so his insurance will go up, a very expensive mistake.  Lots of phone calls back and forth giving advice.  I absolutely hate receiving a text that a kid has gotten into an accident though - why do they do that!?!  Yes, we called him straight away.  Fortunately the kid has good credit as has had a credit card for 2 years, went to the bank, got preapproved for a $5000 loan and found a new car yesterday that he is going to buy if it passes the mechanical inspection tomorrow.  If we had to we were going to loan him money but he never asked so we didn't offer.  He is actually the kid that seems most capable of generally taking care of himself that way, which makes us happy that at 20 he is able to do that.  He is also smart enough to call us for advice.

3.  On Friday my Mother-in-law appears to have fallen in her unit.  She has Alzheimers and the girls who bring her her meals in her care unit took her to the hospital that is attached for x-ray - no broken bones.  Then she decided she wanted to walk on her own back to her unit (she is very active, this would not have been unusual) and fell and broke her hip. Almost no sleep Friday night as we waited to see what was happening - rushed from small town hospital by ambulance to University of Alberta Hospital (one of the best in the country) to wait 9 hours for a room, and then Saturday emergency partial hip replacement.  We are just lucky she was able to have surgery so fast.  We talked to her yesterday after surgery and she seems amazingly lucid, knew who hubby was (becoming more difficult for her to remember) and seemed ok.  She has to stay there for a couple of days and then gets sent back to the small town hospital.  Unfortunately her Doctor is saying that her care requirements are too far gone to be allowed back in her existing unit and she now has to go into long-term care which is basically attached to the same building but a different area and much smaller space.  We knew this was coming but things seem to be progressing on a very fast downward spiral.

Yeah, so our long weekend was spent trying to catch up on sleep after Friday night being mostly sleepless and doing things around the house in case we had to fly out.  We have decided that unless things get worse hubby will wait and fly out in a couple of weeks to help his brother clean out her unit and to see her.  We already have flights booked for early December but he probably will fly out there every 6-8 weeks from now on to see her.  If we get any of the 5 contracts signed for all the proposals we did this week (we expect at least 3 to be confirmed, the others depend on government funding) these trips can be written off as all that business is in Alberta.  If not we have a bunch of airmiles I won this summer and we shall be using them.  That win must have been fate!

I try and stay pretty positive on this blog but sometimes life smacks you in the head.  In the end, fortunately everyone is as best as can be expected after this week and things will hopefully quiet down again.  I have also had a 3 day headache which I can't lose, likely brought on by stress but my glands are swollen so maybe I have a touch of the flu.  Hopefully I can shake that soon too.