My October

Oh man, my October was the most stressful month of my life. There are people who have worse months, so this post isn’t a “pity me” type post. People ask me how I’m doing or how things are going, and I’ll say “stressed” or “recovering” or “finally slowing down a little”, and I get a quizzical look and “What’s going on?” as a response. So I thought I would just put this out there for those who care; and for those who don’t care, you are probably not reading this. Seeing as how we are more than halfway through November when I am posting this, you can guess November has been pretty busy (but not nearly as stressful).

I keep a pretty busy schedule between family, work, church (I’m also the AWANA Commander), side projects, having fun, and all the other life stuff you have to do.

The month started out with the launch of A New Way To Watch TV and we began moving from one side of town to the other. Our lives are a bit packed already, we’re still learning this parenting thing, I work and have side projects, my wife works and has her own business. The first week though my GrandPa Mel started chemo for a second time. On the fourth day he got a blood infection. They did not know how to treat it or what was causing it. After about two days they figured out it was his port, so they removed that. They also put him on some broad spectrum antibiotics, he swelled-up like a red balloon. We scrambled and made flight arrangements for me to fly out there and see him, Karah and Jovi were unable to come though. Before I left they figured out which medication he was allergic to and the swelling and redness began to decrease.

Early in the month I was at an all-day mediation supporting a friend and participating because I was familiar with all the involved parties and circumstances, even though I was not a party of the mediation.

A few days before I am supposed to leave for Phoenix Karah was at the hardware store getting a key made for our new place, her mom and Jovi were in the car (parked), and a guy in a truck backs into the car and drives away, leaving a couple small dents, a puncture, and some scratches on our car. The Montgomery County Sherriff’s department wouldn’t do anything, even though we had his license plate number, vehicle description, and video of incident from the store’s security camera. No one was seriously hurt (thankfully) and it was on private property, so they said all they could do is give us a form to give to our insurance company. So instead of spending the weekend before I was leaving to go see my ailing grandfather moving (which we were on a time limit to do) or doing one of another hundred other things that needed to get done, I was tracking down this guy. Thank you to my friends who aided in this. I found the guy’s house and was finally able to talk to him. He said his son was driving and didn’t know he had hit anything (This was said during the conversation in which I informed him that he had hit our car, with people in it. So I have no idea how he knew his son didn’t know he had hit anything.) He gave us his insurance info and I went home to pack for the trip and get enough stuff moved for Karah and Jovi to stay at the new place while I was out of town.

I got to spend four days in Phoenix with family, and am very grateful. I got confused about my return flight though and missed it. I was able to get on a later flight, which put me home more than six hours later. We are now halfway through the month.
I had to get some dental issues resolved and we are having trouble with the Charter service at our new place. We continue moving our stuff. We rented a moving truck to get the last half of our stuff and loaded it up (thanks dad for coming over and helping); I got about two hours of sleep that night.

Two days later, October 31, we are heading to the hospital to see my boss, his wife, and his new set of triplets! On the way to the hospital we are rear-ended, which was a much more horrible experience with my 10 month old daughter in the back seat than any other similar experience (I make a habit of not getting in car accidents). The whole ordeal (police, emergency room, etc) took about three hours (accident happened around 7:15).

Let’s recap the big ones:
1.  Moving.
2.  Grandfather in ICU.
3.  Trip to Phoenix.
4.   Two car accidents, one resulting in my wife and 10 month old daughter going to the emergency room, and is the one of the worst experiences of my life (Why? Not able to hold and console my screaming/crying baby because it could hurt her worse).

So ya, that was my October… How was yours?