There was a bright spot in my day today. On the way out of the mall, I spotted a Lamborghini parked at the end of the row over from Zern. You know when you're barely paying attention to the game and then your favorite college football team wins 61 to 14? You know when you show up to class even though there's eight inches of snow on the ground because the University forgets that it still has classes on Saturday and you get extra credit? It's that little bit of elation that I feel when I see a truly beautiful car.
It's my 23rd birthday today. The last few weeks have been hectic for me: job interviews, school, the fall season starting on network TV, Don's dad being in the hospital, my aunt being diagnosed with breast cancer...
I hate those days where it all seems to hit the fan. Today, my dear friends, has been one of those days.
Last night AJ and I celebrated my birthday with a 0mg saturated fat party for him and 1/2 a gallon of 1% milk and organic chocolate chip cookies for me. He wished me a happy birthday as we wrapped things up after watching Prison Break.
I woke up this morning to the sound of my phone ringing. It was Don. It was also 5am, so I made the decision to answer the phone only if there was the possibility of emergency on the other end. There was. Don found his dad face down on the bedroom floor at 3am and he was pretty much nonresponsive. To any normal person, one would be tempted to dial 911 at this point, especially if the involved family member had just been released from the hospital on Saturday after a pacemaker/defibrilator device insertion and a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Somehow the phone dialed another family member, a retired Detroit cop, who came over to assess the scene. Upon first glance, he immediately recommended dialing 911. After EMS showed up on the scene, I guess Don found out that his dad (who also has been having complications from diabetes) had a blood sugar in the 20s, where a regular reading was about 100. He was in diabetic shock. So after the ambulance left and Don's uncle drove Don's mom to the hospital, Don got ready for work and then got hysterical and called me.
I went the hell back to bed and woke up to the sound of my phone ringing. It was AJ with another crisis. As I zapped myself back into reality, wondering why the heck AJ would be calling me at 8 in the frick-frackin' morning, I realized as I pressed the "talk" button that today was his day off. Disaster averted--or so I thought. He called to tell me that there was a giant grasshopper outside his room. It was a bad sign, a bad omen. This past Saturday, my moms and I were on our way home from visiting her mother in Canada when, just as we pulled into customs, a grasshopper attacked my windshield. The customs officer just laughed while my mom and I were under attack. As we pulled into America, the grasshopper just clung onto the windshield. I thought "wipers" and hit the switch, but the blasted insect grabbed hold and clung tight for over thirty minutes, until I exited the expressway and used fluid to de-smudge a prominent smudge on the windshield. The fluid jarred the hopper from it's perch and we heard a cracking sound as the bug hit the windshield before disappearing into the wind. AJ thought he found the rogue hopper but he was mistaken. His house is not under attack by grasshoppers. I don't know what this thing is.
I had told my grandmother in Warren that I would visit her today, so I got out of bed and watched some TiVo. I helped my sister with a cocoa powder disaster in the kitchen before we headed out to see her. We made plans to lunch at the PFC. We were starving.
When we got to my grandmother's house, the bibo was sitting in the TV room, obviously in a bunch of back pain. She couldn't get up without pain and buried her face in her hands. She told me there were a bunch of bills she needed me to help her pay in the kitchen, so we relocated. She signs the checks but got confused: signing the plastic divider instead of the check, thinking the carbon copy paper was a check and not a copy... I asked her who I was writing it out for and she told me that my father's birthday was coming up and my uncle's anniversary was also coming up. I had to do a double take because today is the 27th and the tato's birthday is September 4th. My uncle's anniversary was September 9th. The babo kept saying that my dad's birthday was suppsed to be next week. She also thought today was Friday, not Tuesday. It really freaked me out when she couldn't understand her credit card statement. She kept saying that my dad usually helped her with it and her head was fuzzy and she didn't know what to do.
So I called him but he failed to grasp the sense of urgency in my voice. This really was a situation for people who were more in charge that I was. So then my mom calls me and the tears start flowing and I panic a little bit. She calmed me down like only she and Dr. AJ can. She called my dad and he called a doctor and the nurse from the doctor's office told him to take her to ER. So he's been there all day while the Riz and I lunch at the PFC, shop at the Coach store, come home, realize the Riz paid $10 too much for a keychain, she goes to work while I pick up my moms, the moms and I shop Somerset and get a $10 refund at Coach, I splurge on a new cutting board from Crate & Barrel, my moms' new credit card is declined at Williams-Sonoma, I made her call the credit card company and there's $4,000 free on the card, we dine at Maggiano's for my birthday dinner, we fight over who gets to pay the bill, we come home and hear from the tato.
It turns out that they are going to keep the bibo over night. She had a UTI, which can make some older peeps act a little confused and fuzzy. They want her for observation because after a few X-rays, they found that her bones have deteriorated a bunch and they need her to see a specialist. The tato just got home and it's 1030p. I don't know what the plan is for tomorrow, but I hope a Lamborghini isn't the bright spot of my day.
