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Scattered Thoughts from an Insanely Tired FurFace

It was only an hour ago when I finally arrived home (roughly 10:50 pm). I am very tired from work and the hospital so my post is brief, but I wanted all of you, my caring friends, family, and students to have an update.

1. My mother had her surgery today and it seems to have gone acceptably. She is now in the Intensive Care Unit and connected to a ventilator as the doctor had planned for her safety. She was awake for the few moments we could visit. I assured her that things went well and reminded her about how the ventilator and the ICU stay would be brief and she would [hopefully] begin to feel much better very soon.

2. Abbagirl74 has returned to posting and it makes me happy to have her back. In her recent comment to me she stated "If you are not happy with your job, what are you doing about it?" I wish to comment on that statement briefly below:

Abbagirl74, I apologize if my writings gave you the impression that I was not happy with my job. That was not my intent in that post. On the contrary, at this time I truly love my job, and most of the time I have always relished my role as a professor , researcher, and educator. What I was attempting to paint with my words in that post is that due to the overwhelming stress of my elderly mother's illness and the impact it has had on my overall family and the significant impact it has had on my immediate family, I felt sad that I was not feeling that usual sense of joy and expectation I normally feel at the start of a new academic year. It was not my job that was the problem, instead it was the other life circumstances that weighed so heavily upon me that even those things I do relish (in this instance my job and the start of the academic year) did not elicit the joy I so crave. In a very real sense, my teaching this week has been akin to a lifeline... it has given me something to focus on that has felt more normal and I have felt much more relaxed while being their than while at home or in dealing with the hospital situations. I was simply feeling sad that I was able to experience the typical invigorating excitement due to the other hardships I was experiencing.

3. A good friend has apparently misconstrued a comment I made to him and now seems to be ignoring me. For this I am sad. I am thinking of perhaps having a full comment on this at a later date, so I will not even attempt a skeletal framework now. But suffice it to say that I have reread the comment I wrote and I think what I said was not mean spirited. I think it was showing significant concern and care for this friend. I shall have to frame my words even more carefully for this future essay.

PipeTobacco