Vacations

My mom and I decided that we were going to go visit a friend in Oregon for a week and a half at the beginning of August. We started making plans and she started letting people know that she'd be gone. All was going well.

When my mom told her friend "Jane" about our plans, Jane wanted to ride north with us. She has family not too far from where we were going and wanted to go see them. Jane did not ask for a ride, she informed my mother that she'd be coming with us.

As we made our plans we started to have problems. Everything that my mom and I said we were going to do that didn't fit Jane's plans she'd kick up a fuss about. We said that we were planning to drive straight through to our destination with no side trips. This was unacceptable. There were museums along the way that Jane just had to go see. We said that we'd be having lunch at the diner that my sister-in-law works at, since we'd be going by it at about lunch time. This was unacceptable. Jane has a friend an hour north of our planned stop who is a waitress and we needed to eat lunch there so Jane could see her friend. We said that we wanted to do the 9 hour drive in one day. This was unacceptable. Jane wanted to take the trip slower and have one night on the road.

As things went on my mom got more and more stressed about our "fun" vacation. She went back and forth with the idea of just calling off the trip. Mom called Jane to talk about things, but couldn't get her to listen. So mom sent an email that said this is what we're doing and this is when and where we'd like to meet you. (Jane lives about an hour opposite of the direction we were going, so we asked her to meet us at our house and she could leave her car in our driveway. We live in a small town with an extremely low crime rate, so the car would've been safe. She refused.) That was the beginning of the nasty emails. Dealing with Jane was just too much, so mom called off the trip.

I knew that my mom really needed to get away, so I kept getting us ready to go. The day before we were scheduled to go I let my mom know that we were ready and there was no reason that we couldn't go without Jane. The next morning mom decided to go anyway, and sent an email out that said that there was a last minute change in plans and we were leaving after all. (Biggest deciding factor was mom's friend calling and saying that she needed to see my mom.) We loaded up the car and left.

While we were in Oregon mom would check her email regularly, and she found some rather nasty emails from Jane. And then she started getting emails from other friends wanting to know what was going on because Jane had said that mom was mad at them. Mom dealt with this as nicely as possible, but it put a real damper on our vacation.

Just about the time that we were really starting to relax and enjoy ourselves, my mom got a call. My grandma had been admitted to the hospital and was in ICU. As the calls came throughout the afternoon and we got more info we found that grandma wasn't doing well at all. The doctor's didn't expect her to live. Grandma told my cousin that what she really wanted was to see all her kids one last time.

So we throw all our stuff into the car and leave. This was made more difficult because my mom and her friend were having a sewing holiday, so there was a sewing machine and a serger to put in the car, along with fabric, half finished projects, and other various items that she had needed for her sewing. But I get it all in the car and we take off.

We had originally planned to drive home, and leave from there for Colorado, but we were told that if we took that extra day we probably wouldn't get there in time. So an hour down the road we stopped and bought an atlas. We picked our route and we were off. The mantra for that trip was, "I bet this is a really pretty drive in the daylight." (We were driving a car that overheats, so most of our driving was night driving.) Our longest stop was in Lakeview, OR. We had to wait there for four hours until a gas station opened up. The wait would have been better if there had been a vacancy in one of the local motels.

We finally arrived at the hospital, only to have a nurse not want to let us in since grandma had just gotten to sleep. Mom explained that we had just driven 33 hours to see grandma, and we would be really quiet and not wake her. We went and sat in a corner of her room to wait for her to wake. About 15 minutes later the nurse woke grandma because she had visitors. We never could figure that one out.

After being given six pints of blood grandma made an amazing recovery. Taking her off the blood thinners stopped the internal bleeding and grandma got to go home. We were so thankful and relieved that she was alright. Mom and I decided to stay for a little while to help get grandma and grandpa set up in a living situation that would be healthy for them.

Things were almost settled when I got a call that my husband was in the hospital. We jumped in the car and were on the road again. This time it was get back to California as quickly as possible. My husband wasn't expected to die, but I needed to get back to him just the same. We got home one week ago today, at 2:00 a.m.

My husband was discharged from the hospital on Sunday. The doctor there said to keep the appointment that he already had scheduled with his regular doctor, that there was no need to go in earlier. Thursday our regular doctor got the report from the hospital and his office called wanting to see my husband right away. So my husband makes an appointment to see the doctor on Friday.

As we were getting ready to go to the doctor my mom got a call that her dad is in the hospital. That first phone call said he would be fine and was expected home in a couple of days. That was yesterday. Today the news was that grandpa is in ICU and the doctor says that he'll never go home. So mom is on the road to Colorado again. This time dad went with her, since I have surgery in a week and a half.

I've decided that we really need to find a new reason for jumping in the car and driving over 1500 miles. The reasons we've been using suck. I hate traveling for those reasons.

I wish that I were going too. Please help me pray for my grandpa.