Late to the party

I really need to get into the habit of writing my Friday Fragments throughout the week so I'm not so unfashionably late to Mrs. 4444s Friday Fragments party.

Tardy or not, here goes:

Thank you all for your support regarding my mother-in-law's illness. I realized that I've never updated here. Although we had originally been told it was a matter of days, she is still with us, which has meant that Mike's been able to go spend several days with her and we'll probably all head down there again soon. 

Last weekend, we were given the same news about my grandmother. She is 87 years old and was hospitalized a bit unexpectedly. We thought she was going to go to a nursing home, but she took a turn for the worse, was largely unresponsive for several days and a transfer to hospice was arranged for last Monday. My uncle went in to see her on Monday morning, touched her arm and said "Mom, it's John." Boy was he shocked when she opened her eyes and plainly said "Well, hi John! How are you?" By that afternoon she was sitting up in a chair and eating yogurt. 

The above situations clearly indicate that the secret to immortality is being related to me! 

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In the category of "just how dumb can people be?" -- On Monday, there were crazy thunderstorms in our area. I looked out my office window to see two men up on the roof of the 2-story house across the street, trying to lay down tarp. Crazy, I know, and you wouldn't find me up there in a thundering, lightning downpour, but I guess if they were trying to cover a leak I can understand. What I couldn't understand, when I looked out again a few minutes later, was that they had a KID up there with him. He was easily only 10 or 11 years old. On a two-story roof. In the rain. While thunder and lightning was all around. I wanted to call the police. Others in our office said it's not a crime to be an idiot parent. But if he had fallen off that roof and I did nothing, I would have been sick forever. So I called the non-emergency number. By the time the police got there to "check the child's welfare," all three were safely down, thank God.

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You know that big thunderstorm? Well, no one in the office wanted to go out for lunch on Monday (and I'd left mine sitting in the fridge at home), so we decided to order something in. We were thrilled to find out that the downtown Jimmy John's would deliver to us. Boy, did I feel awful when the delivery guy showed up. He had ridden his BIKE more than 2 miles in that storm to bring our lunch! If I'd known it was bike delivery, I never would have ordered. So some so-fast-it's-freaky props to Paul, sandwich deliverer extraordinaire!

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Two thumbs up for lessons learned. I got a call from the school nurse yesterday that Charlie had been hurt on recess and that she thought we might want to get his arm x-rayed. Of course I didn't get the call right away because I'd left my cell phone at home and when she called the office, I was out to lunch. But when I returned the call about an hour later, she said she'd bandaged it and he went back to class. When I got home, he was sitting on the couch (yes, MY couch), which is pretty unusual for him. So, having learned my lesson from a few years ago, I didn't give him the "I think your fine" speech. Instead, I took him for x-rays. And this morning, I took him to school sporting a new red cast...

Have a great weekend friends!