It was an interesting weekend...

...but not the good kind of interesting.

So, my dad had a heart attack last week. That was really not the way I wanted to wake up on Friday. My phone rang and the caller ID said "Mom Cell Phone," which I immediately knew meant something wasn't right. My mom is possibly the worst cell phone carrier of all time. Usually she only has it on when she and my dad are out of town and she's worried one of us might need to reach her...so the fact that she was actually calling me from it meant something out of the ordinary had happened. I answered and she told me that my dad had suffered from a heart attack and he was going to be fine, but she wanted to let me know. I grabbed a pen and paper to jot down which room he was in at the hospital and told her I'd be there in a bit.

I have a good relationship with both of my parents, but I've definitely always been a "daddy's girl." My dad and I share a similar sense of humor and I feel there are things about me that he understands better than my mom does. He was certainly much less exasperated with me as a teenager (sorry Mom!).

So you can understand how for me at least, there is something very unsettling about seeing your dad laid up in the hospital with tubes in his nose and wires connecting him to all sorts of machines neither of you understands which beep for no apparent reason (ok yeah, of course there's a reason...I'm just of the opinion that hospital machines shouldn't beep unless something is wrong...mainly cuz it freaks me out a little). How am I supposed to react to that? Here was the guy who's been a protector and a provider for the majority of my life...last time I saw him he was perfectly fine and now he's (temporarily) incapacitated. I still don't really know, it was weird. I just did my best to keep it together (after all, he was going to be fine, no reason to fall apart) and told him I was glad he didn't die. Cuz the more I heard about what happened, the more I realized he very well could have.

Here's the thing about my dad: he is as stubborn as hell (yes, that's where I get it). He started having chest pains on Tuesday...they got pretty severe on Thursday, but he drove to the airport to pick up my Grandma anyway. Then on Friday he woke up and said the pain was so intense he felt like his entire body was on fire. Only then did he tell my mom he thought they should go to the hospital (he hadn't told her anything up until that point). And then, before they left for the ER he was sure to make the bed, shower and then clean the shower. This is my dad, folks. Classic. It's funny because that is sooooooo him, but terrifying because most other people wouldn't have waited that long to get checked out and had he waited any longer, he'd be dead.

*Shudder*

ANYWAY, I didn't have any major epiphanies about how fragile life is or anything like that (although this was definitely a reminder). I did ponder death a little, and how strangely we deal with it, particularly in this culture...but that's another topic for another post. And I was reminded how much I don't like hospitals (they smell funny). But honestly, I don't have anything profound to say. I'm just really, really happy my dad didn't die. Here's to hoping he sticks around for a LONG time. :-)

Updates and other random stuff

Hello kids. I know that many of you are simply DYING to hear about my life right now. Well...here are some important updates:

-Remember when that angry customer said he was going to write a nasty letter about how rude I am? It never came. Bummer.

-The building where I work STILL smells like poo.

-My car no longer smells of skunk. At least, I can't smell it any more. I've even driven friends around in it and they couldn't smell it either. Crisis over.

-Jacob's co-pilot internship got shut down by the FAA b/c they decided it was breaking some rule or regulation blah blah blah. So Jacob is home to stay...I'm THRILLED that he's home, but this definitely throws a wrench in the gears. Now his only option for getting commercial flight hours without flat out paying for them ($250 an hour) is to get his Flight Instructor rating and teach. Not what we had in mind, but it will be ok. There is a VERY slim chance he might be able to finish the program...the company that does it is trying to get approval from the FAA for those who are currently enrolled to finish. But the final ruling on that one is going to take 6 months minimum. For now Jacob is back and working as the managing editor at the magazine where he's been writing articles for the past year and a half. Not his ideal situation, but it'll do for the time being.

-I kind of hate everyone I work with today. Ok, that is completely not true. I kind of hate most everyone I work with today. It's like they've learned all my pet peeves and are deliberately doing all of them to piss me off. So although I know none of them will ever read this (if you work with me and you currently do or ever have read this blog, I am not talking about you), I'm going to make a couple of requests anyway...
#1: If you can see that I'm already on the phone...and particularly if I'm being yelled at by an irate customer...do not try to talk to me. Do not put things on my desk and try to tell me what they are or why you're giving them to me. Do not make hand motions in an attempt to explain it either because quite frankly, you suck at charades. I am busy focusing on my job and cannot devote any attention to you, so you really need to wait until I'm finished to dump your crap on me. I know I'm good at multi-tasking, but I'm humble enough to admit that I'm not THAT good. So just wait until I'm done for crying out loud.
#2: Do not motion for me to come to your desk to help you. Do not say, "Julie come here and fix this." I am not a dog and will not come when you call me. Nor am I your personal problem-solver or slave. If you have a question that you need help with, get off your lazy butt and come ask me. If it actually does require my presence at your desk, have the courtesy to ASK me to come over instead of telling me to. Honestly, the more you demand I come over, the more determined I will be to stay put in my chair.
#3: When you hover, it's creepy. I don't come stand behind you and read over your shoulder without any specific purpose when you're sitting at your desk, so please don't do it to me. On that same note, don't come over to my desk and expect me to entertain you. If you would like to initiate a conversation with me, I welcome it as long as you have something to say. If you come over, I ask you if you need help or have a question and you say "No I'm just bored" and then look at me like I'm supposed to do something about it, I will most likely tell you to go back to your desk and do one of the following: read a book, draw a picture, ponder the meaning of life, or come up with a plan for world peace. If you tell me you don't want to, I will suddenly become very busy working on something on my computer and ignore you until you leave. It's not my job to entertain you and if you've been working here for this long and you haven't figured out that you need to bring stuff to do when there's downtime, you deserve to sit at your desk and watch the seconds endlessly tick by. We are not children here, so stop whining like one.


-And now...politics:
Issue #1: I'd like to make a few comments on the whole "building a mosque/community centre" near Ground Zero business. Now, before everyone gets their panties in a bunch thinking I'm being disrespectful to the victims of 911, let me explain. I mean no disrespect, nor do I wish to dishonor what happened to those people. I remember quite vividly what that day felt like, it's not something I'm likely to ever forget. It was beyond terrible. However...that act of violence was carried out by a group of terrorist extremists. Islam is a HUGE religion with a larger following than Christianity, and the majority of its members are peaceful. It is not right to discriminate against them, they have just as much right to worship as everyone else.


Bottom line is, the property and permits were acquired through the proper legal channels, and refusing to allow the mosque to be built is, in my opinion, wrong. If we consider people of the Muslim faith practicing their religion in a building close to the site of 9-11 (for the record, you can't even see Ground Zero from the building) to be a slap in the face to the victims, survivors and their families...the fences will never be mended and we will never be able to move past what happened.


Issue #2: Burning Qurans is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard and Pastor Terry Jones is a freaking moron who apparently doesn't give a crap about the well-being of our troops. That's all I have to say about that one.

Alright, that's enough from me. Until next time...