Once the realization of ‘it ain’t over yet’ begins to set in you start to drop your resistance and eventually ‘go with the flow’. This helps to minimize the anxiety of the unknown and your fretfulness slowly subsides.

Thursday morning our sweet Colin woke up with a ginormous index finger and knuckle on his right hand that looked like it belonged to someone else. We had been carefully monitoring a spider bite that he’d gotten Sunday while trekking in the woods at a friends house, but it was now clear that it was going ‘postal’ on him (berserk, out-of-control). The first words out of the doctor’s mouth was ‘he really needs to be in the hospital’! I nearly fell out of my chair. He could tell, from the look on my face, that I hadn’t fully comprehended the gravity of the situation prior to that moment. He explained all the things that can happen with an infected hand and then called my attention to the faint red streak beginning to creep up the back of Colin’s hand. After several moments of deliberation and more discussion, he felt that we were clearly on the leading edge of events, and perhaps if he lanced it, allowing it to drain, and began a vigorous course of oral antibiotics that maybe we’d be able to stay ahead of the infection. Sounded fine with me.

After bringing Larry (darling hubby) up to date (he was in Bastrop ninety minutes away at a conference), hubby instructed me to find out what the doctor would want given at the hospital and he could take care of that. Hit the infection with a tri-fecta of drainage, oral and IV antibiotics, ought to be a home-run! So, Thursday evening when Dad got home we administered the first course and by Friday morning there was improvement on the appearance and size of the swollen index knuckle and the back of his hand. Looking good! We administered the second round and kept Colin’s activity to a minimum for the day.

Before Larry even arrived at work Friday morning, there had been some sort of horrible accident on the highway a block from his office and all power had been knocked out for a considerable area. Computers were down, and everything in the Londonderry Centre’ of course was dead as well. Delaying the start of his very busy half-day of work before leaving Waco for yet another conference in New Orleans. I HAD planned on accompanying him (to celebrate our 29th Wedding Anniversary on the 24th) but with Colin’s hand issues I wasn’t about to leave town. An infection like that can always decide to be stubborn and take a turn for the worse and one of us needed to be available should anything else be required). When power was restored everything came back on line and the office was humming along nicely . . .EXCEPT for his phone system. It was DOA.

We actually have been negotiating a new phone system for about the last 30 days and had already made some decisions on how to proceed in a ‘worse-case-scenario’ event, and VOILA!!! Thanks to a crack IT team and a quick run to Wal-Mart by mid-morning phone capability had been restored temporarily and we’d only actually been without official communication for about 90 minutes, during which time the answering service simply routed phone calls to the staff personal cell phones. By the end-of-the-day the old system had been dismantled and removed and the new system had been installed. Isn’t digital technology wonderful…sometimes?!

Larry was pretty emotionally drained at this point but headed out for his meeting, courageously, anyway. His flight out of Waco had a not unexpected, brief delay because of all the rain in and around the central Texas area, but no problem! Then there was delay, Delay DELAY! And finally getting out, having missed his connecting flight in Houston he was put on stand-by on the LAST flight out of Houston to New Orleans scheduled to leave at 9:15pm on a rainy Friday evening, and itself delayed.

Stand-by means just that…you stand-by and watch your LAST CHANCE FLIGHT OUT-OF-TOWN leave…WITHOUT YOU!!! I’m not really clear on what actually transpired between he and the ticket agent, but he was unable to secure a seat on any flights into New Orleans that would get him there before late in the afternoon Saturday AND he was unable to return to Waco on anything prior to a flight leaving at 5:50PM late Saturday. Somehow he managed to drag himself to an unknown hotel near the airport and was last heard of going to bed, uttering “Don’t call me…I’ll call you!”

We are not accustomed to our lives being filled with so many extraordinary mishaps in such a brief span of time. It seems that between November 1st and now there has been a domino effect going on and it is beginning to take wear us thin. A dear friend of mine has cautioned me from asking the quintessential question of ‘What next’…which I most assuredly intend to take to heart. Perhaps that will put a stop to all of the havoc that has encompassed us lately, who can say? I simply know, that in spite of all this, and through all of this, our dear LORD is sovereign. He has been here, in our midst, walking beside us, lifting us up, helping us cope with even the slightest frustration, anxiety, and concern. He cares about what happens to HIS children even as we care for ours. HE is faithful and TRUE and loves us unconditionally. Praise God!

Blessings on your weekend, remember that after the rain comes the rainbow…stay dry!

Katherine

Let’s see now, where was I….oh yes…

By late Saturday afternoon I figured there wasn’t anything else that could happen right? I mean, the frozen water pipe was just fine, the thermostat had been re-programmed and was behaving, so off I go with hubby for a bit of a night out, Baylor Men’s Basketball against Oklahoma, followed by ‘The Blind Side’ which we hadn’t yet seen.

You know, I was ALMOST home free…until half way through the movie, my phone rings…”Katherine…do you have any flashlights out here, the power’s gone off and we only have a small one and the battery isn’t very good since it’s pretty dim?” Oh, yeah…”and it’s really dark out here!” I was completely mortified at this point and nearly speechless. It simply was staggering that something else was actually going wrong!

I went back to my seat, grabbed hubby, and called the power company quickly only to be told that, yes they were inundated with calls from all over that area of the county and they were addressing these emergencies by calling in additional crews and such, but all that to say they could not predict when my power would be restored if at all tonight (Saturday) GREAT NEWS! I’m like…”Are you serious?” It’s like going to be in the ‘teens’!

My wonderful hubby that he is, suggested we run across the highway and secure a couple of rooms at the LaQuinta for the ladies. I then instructed the gals to head in for the night…they were wanting to run over to McGregor and stay there, but that area was also supposed to have been hit by the power outages and I didn’t want to chance them driving all the way over there to a hotel with no power either…besides it was now 9:15, I had two rooms for them at the LaQuinta which would be much nicer anyway..so they came on into Waco. I got my automated call back from the Electrical Co-Op about 11:45pm that the power had been restored. Thanks!

About 8:30, Sunday morning, I checked with the ladies before heading to church and they planned on returning out to the Cottage and scrapping some more that afternoon before heading home. I was very thankful that they were so understanding about this onslaught of mishaps. This has not at all been my experience in the nine months that My Bluebonnet Cottage has been open for guests, and I offered them a return weekend on the house! Off to church we go….

So, we’re sitting there enjoying pastor’s sermon and, yeah…you guessed it…my phone rang (in silent mode of course)…”Katherine, I just wanted you to know that when we got back to the Cottage, it was 96 degrees in here!” No way!…yeah WAY!! I give… I’m done…what else is there? They AGAIN reprogrammed the thermostat and actually turned on the A/C for a while to cool it off. They did stay I think most of the afternoon and scrapped before heading home.

The ladies said that in spite of the mishaps they did have a good time scrapbooking and are planning to take my offer of a return visit. So, I guess all will end well…eventually!

I do hope your weekend was less eventful than mine, and I am very happy that the week has been much better. Of course the return of more normal temperatures is very helpful. Try as we might, Central Texas is not a good place to be in when the temperatures dip so low, for such an extended period of time. We’re just not equipped for such a prolonged hard freeze. But like everything…this too shall PASS!

Have a GREAT week!
Blessings to you and yours!
Katherine