{"id":1188,"date":"2010-12-29T00:01:49","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T06:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2010-12-29T00:01:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-29T06:01:49","slug":"family-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/12\/family-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, 26 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we spent decompressing. I awoke first and began brewing some tea. Jennifer and Isla got up next and Jennifer checked her emails while she ate breakfast. A tired Owen came hobbling into the living room about a half hour later. He declared that it was time to take the tree down, but I told him it still feels like the holidays to me, so we\u2019d leave it up past New Year\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Soon after eating breakfast, Jennifer announced we would be cleaning the living room \u2013 at least to make the floor safe for Isla. We collapsed a few gift bags, and removed the packaging from some of Owen\u2019s gifts. We started putting away some of his gifts, too; his new card game went in his room, the soap I won in the dice game went in my bathroom, the bag of nuts Jennifer won went in the pantry. Jennifer posted on Facebook that Christmas threw up in our living room. I quite agreed.<\/p>\n

Jennifer\u2019s parents came over this afternoon to take Owen for a couple of days. He\u2019s off from school this coming week, too, and so it\u2019s a great time for him to sleep over at his grandparents\u2019 house. Once he left, I breathed a sigh of relief; \u2018cause, man, he\u2019s a lot of work. Jennifer and I sat down at around 3:30 this afternoon and, with Isla calmly nursing and then falling into a nap, we watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie<\/em>. A really lame, boring episode titled \u201cChicago.\u201d Yes, it is<\/em> as bad as it sounds.<\/p>\n

Monday, 27 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, the first two hours I spent in that weird, dream-like state known as \u2018consciousness\u2019 were quite good. From about 8:30 to 10:30 I reveled in my first day of a weeklong furlough from work. I again brewed some tea, and Jennifer and I sat and read quietly. Then we got up to continue our cleaning \u2013 without Owen around we planned to get a lot done, and we were expecting company this evening, so I was looking forward to that.<\/p>\n

But then Jennifer\u2019s mom called and said we had to come and get Owen.<\/p>\n

I was worried that something was wrong with Owen or that he had misbehaved so badly that my mother-in-law couldn\u2019t stand another second with him. Well, the good news is, my son was not the problem. The bad news, though, was that my mother-in-law\u2019s brother Mark had died unexpectedly several hours earlier.<\/p>\n

I gotta admit, I didn\u2019t know Mark very well. He made himself rather rare at family gatherings and, apart from briefly saying hello to him when the family convened in Hinckley<\/a> for my wife\u2019s grandma\u2019s (Mark\u2019s mom) birthday, I hadn\u2019t seen him all year. In fact, now that I think about it, he never meet Isla. Still, I was very sad that someone so close to people that I do know and care about had passed away so abruptly (and young \u2013 he was in his mid-50s).<\/p>\n

The news of Mark\u2019s untimely passing sent me on an impromptu drive up to my in-laws\u2019 home to pick up Owen. When I got there, Owen was with my wife\u2019s two teenage cousins, who had been dropped off to care for Owen while my mother-in-law went to tell the terrible news to her mom. So the four of us piled into my car, and I dropped my wife\u2019s cousins off at their house and then spent another half hour answering high-strung questions from a nervous and confused five year old.<\/p>\n

Mark’s mom did not take the news very well (I suppose that goes without saying) and \u2013long story short \u2013 she ended up in the hospital this afternoon after suffering a heart attack.<\/p>\n

When I arrived back home, Jennifer wasn\u2019t sure what to do regarding our plans for company this evening (I left it up to her) and we kept anticipating a phone call with more bad news.<\/p>\n

Update: my wife\u2019s grandma will be spending the night at the hospital, but it appears her heart is in good condition and will recovery physically, if not emotionally, from the rough day.<\/p>\n

Now we wait to find out about news of funeral arrangements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, 26 December 2010 Today we spent decompressing. I awoke first and began brewing some tea. Jennifer and Isla got up next and Jennifer checked her emails while she ate breakfast. A tired Owen came hobbling into the living room about a half hour later. He declared that it was time to take the tree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}