Psychologists have something called the Holmes and Rahe stress indicator, which like all really valuable scientific tools quantifies the seemingly unquantifiable through the assignation of somewhat random numbers. It's useful for determining how close a person is to major health catastrophe brought on by the stress in their life. A quick look at this will explain exactly what happened to my mom on Saturday during what was supposed to be her move from Chattanooga to Murfreesboro.
On Friday night, my son went to a birthday party, and my wife and daughter went camping. I used my first time by myself in months to clean my house for 2 and half hours and watch BASEketball, which I had not seen in years. Max didn't even get in until 10, and I don't think either of us was really out until 11:45 or so.
Cue Saturday morning, which now seems like an eternity ago. I got up at 7, got ready, got Max up and dressed, and we met my mom's friend Crystal and her mom in the parking lot of our apartments at a little after eight. After an ATM and breakfast for Max stop, Max went to hang out with his grandfather all day. They hit three stores for Free Comic Book Day, got Chinese lunch, played Monopoly and Max went to a school cookout. So he had an awesome day. Not so, the rest of us. Crystal, her mom and I made the drive to Chattanooga in what seemed like much less than the typical 2 hours and change because we were getting along well and joking around. We got to my mom's house at about 10:40 CST, and she was mostly packed - we only moved stuff for a little while, odds and ends and last minute items.
Not long after this, my mom had to lie down on the floor, and without going into any details, we ended up in short order calling EMTs who picked her up and took her to the hospital. There began - for us - the long wait to find out what was wrong. Essentially, what was wrong was that my grandmother's not been well, there's been no power since the tornadoes, the water's been off for 24 hours, my mother's not been eating or drinking properly, and some of her normal medications didn't care for that so much. So, the ER, followed by the ICU. She is still there, undergoing tests and observation, but she's much better and her blood pressure's near where it ought to be now - she hopes to be in the 'Boro by Tuesday. After much waiting (during which I finally ate a BLT and called basically everyone while watching a lot of TNT's Saturday line-up) I visited with her for a couple of hours yesterday evening before deciding that the most helpful thing to do would be to take the 22 foot moving truck with all of her worldly goods in it and bring it to Murfreesboro.
Before I could do this, I had a physical altercation with a security guard, helped murder a trashcan, and had to get one of my mom's soon-to-be-former neighbors, RIck, to help me get the damn truck off the mountain. Rick was awesome. Last night, between 9ish and 11ish CST, I drove the moving truck over Monteagle (my iPod saved me with an excellent mix) and back here, missing the playoff game and parking the truck in everyone's way outside. I came home and crashed hard.
Got up early this morning, about 6:30, and helped Max and Abby ready the eggs, pancakes, strawberries and coffee that went with the Mother's Day gift, card, and video that they had made on Thursday. My lovely wife got to sleep until 10, then enjoy about two hours of Mother's Day before we got word that we could move my mom's stuff into her apartment here without her signing stuff. We got keys to the place, cut the lock off the truck, and started really getting stuff in there at about 1:45. Special thanks goes out to Ron, who helped me kick off the process, Nathan, from C's chorus, Laura Dove and Mike, Steve and Randy, and Christie for helping me get it all in there by 4:45. On the first hot, breezeless day in over two weeks, natch.
We wrapped it up (I printed Steve another copy of the thing I'm working on) and everyone seemed to be crashing pretty hard - I, for one, didn't move from my couch for almost 2 hours. When I did, I walked the dog, squared away the final stuff in my mom's place, gave her keys back to the front office, went to grocery store, returned home for my wallet, went back, bought food, and then had my car be weird to me. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! Not the alarm - a consistent sound that goes forever. I had to pull the battery cables off. The kids and I had a good laugh about it once it was over, but what the hell was that?
The coda to a bizarre and exhausting weekend. I crash now.