Wow, it's been a while. I'll have to get into the habit of writing here more often.

Okay, updates.

Mom is doing fine. I saw her a week ago on a Baltimore layover, and she actually treated me to dinner at the Friday night buffet that she and my Aunt Lois and Uncle Bill attend every week. More about that particular adventure later.

Dad is doing well too, just returning from visiting my brother in Baltimore (we crossed paths there) and his sisters in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He is walking more than before, but I do encourage him to get more exercise. Using his wheelchair to maneuver around his house and watching TV isn't helping his recovery, and I believe the less he uses it the better. He essentially agrees, and so keeping him moving isn't all that hard.

Kerry is nursing a sprained ankle, but she is a tough one. I would have taken at least 4 weeks to recover from that one (in my experience a sprain takes longer to recover from than a break), but she was back up in three days, and practicing volleyball again in 2 weeks.

Kirstie is continuing her recovery quite well, albeit with one significant complication. If I refer to her teasingly as my rodent child, it's because she is now on a medically supervised 3-6 month course of rat poison (Warfarin) for treatment of a pulmonary embolism that occurred shortly after her June knee surgery. The teasing is cathartic - this one frightened me. She noticed a shortness of breath a week after her extensive knee reconstruction surgery and WALKED THE 8 OR SO BLOCKS TO THE HOSPITAL ON CRUTCHES!!! Yeah, exactly! Tough kid, but an ambulance would have been a better choice. PEs are serious, with the only study ever done comparing treated and untreated patients resulting in a 26% mortality rate for untreated patients. There are flaws in that study, but the mortality rate for untreated cases was SO high that no study to refine that number was ever attempted. After being ignored at the Emergency Clinic for several hours, the medical personnel there finally got around to checking and found a clot in her lungs, and two more in her leg. I found out later that her boyfriend had actually shown up and raised enough of a fuss to speed things up a little, for which I am very grateful. I couldn't talk her into doing that (I tried, but she refused to speak up), and it really needed to be done. I still get a bit hot under the collar thinking about it, even now.

She is now well into her recovery, walking normally and exercising enough to keep me mollified. I expect her recovery from the surgery to be at least as good as mine, and hopefully better.

Erika is doing well too, probably the best of any of us (fingers crossed while knocking on wood!). We have gotten better at communication and I try to Skype call her once a week at least. I think she needs - or at least appreciates - the conversations with a person back home too. She tolerates the anti-malarial meds well, and has managed to dodge or kill the occasional Dengue Fever carrying mosquito. And no, you can't tell - they look like every other mosquito. She just kills or avoids as many as she can. The earthquake at the end of September near Irian Jaya in Indonesia was at least 1200 miles away from her, so I'm not worrying about that right now. Reactions to the "pastor" who threatened to burn a Qu'ran had me more worried, but it appears that has blown over with a minimum of damage. I blame the media for giving him a voice.

Now on to my adventure with Mom et al in Baltimore.

Mostly it was about the driving. As I put on my Facebook entry,

"Aunt Lois (brain surgery survivor) was driving, Uncle Bill (blind in one eye & can't see with the other) was giving directions. Mom (the one whose neck still works) was in back calling lane changes. This was my ride to the old folks buffet..."

Truthfully it was only a little frightening, and the three of them actually worked quite well together for a safe ride to the buffet. Or maybe, as I told my cousins on Facebook, I spent the entire ride in my "happy place", blissfully unaware of the danger I was in. In either case, things went just fine.

PS. This post spent nearly a year as a draft, so it is a bit behind the times. Still, I'll post it now.