Busy couple of weeks

Well, I had planned to write again sooner, but it looks like every 2 weeks is about when I manage to get my blog on. So here I am.

It's been totally hectic lately. Kim's surgery went well. The back pain is totally gone; now she just has to heal and recover from the surgery itself. The only negative out of the whole thing was her wedding ring. She swelled up from all the IV fluid they pumped into her to the point that the ring was starting to cut off circulation in her finger. After trying to get it off, they asked her if they could cut it off. In the midst of her pre-surgery drugs, her response was, "Do whatever you need to do to my finger just don't cut my ring." Good thing they didn't listen to her! So, her ring ended up a casualty of the surgery. We'll have to see about getting it fixed, since they were decent enough to cut it on the plain metal spacer portion of the ring rather than in the middle of the Celtic design portion.

Kim's sister Tracy has been out here helping us for the last week, and that's been a huge thing. I took care of Kim and the kids myself for the first week after surgery and that was... a lot of work. I made it through ok, but there was a lot of frustration and very little sleep. Tracy's has helped out so much that it's more than made up for the extra work of taking care of four kids instead of two (since she brought her kids out as well). It's been nice meeting Tyler and Kaylee and getting to play at being Uncle for a while.

One thing it's certainly convinced me of: NO WAY IN HELL do I want more kids. One was challenging. Two has been hard. Four? A very trying experience, and that's with 3 adults to keep track of them all. How do people manage? I just don't see how you keep all those kids under control at the same time, especially those single moms with that many kids.

My dad got here today to help with the next phase of Kim's recovery. Tracy is leaving on Tuesday and Jasmine's birthday is tomorrow. I'm glad he'll be here for it. Both kids were so excited to see him today. I always love seeing the smiles on their faces when we open the door and *BAM* There's Grandpa!!

On the work front, things are both good and bad. We faced the first round of layoffs since I've been here, with minimal damage to the newsroom thankfully. What's nice for me is that led to my promotion-on-top-of-my-promotion. I'll be starting the new job around the 15th of this month, unless things get crazy again. As usual. So we'll see how that goes. I'm excited about diving in to some databases and getting my feet wet with some Computer Assisted Reporting.

Yeah, that's about it for now. I'll be keeping an eye on the news for what happens with all this Hurricane Gustav stuff. Looks like things may get ugly again down there. Blech.