nlbarber

I've made it to my father's house in Moultrie. Not a pleasant trip, as it was raining steadily for about 3/4 of the drive, and I-75 was full of trucks (as usual) throwing lots of spray. Luckily the freezing rain last night and this morning only deposited a light coating on my trees, and I then headed south and got out of any possible ice problems. I did have to push the speed a little (for the conditions), as I had a 3:00 conference call on a topic that I needed to weigh in on. I got here about 2:53, I think <g>, and joined the call a little late as it took me several tries to correctly dial the FTS access number, my card number, the conference bridge number, and the conference code. After the call ended, I put together a shopping list from my stuff and my father's and braved the pre-dinner and pre-Christmas Wal-Mart crowd. I'm sure I'll be back--any trip to Moultrie seems to include almost-daily Wal-Mart trips.

Tomorrow I'll help clean and straighten the house, do some food preparation for the post-funeral lunch on Saturday, and we may host some of the family for dinner tomorrow night by getting barbecued pork from a local place, making my favorite "Brunswick stew from cans", and adding some salad stuff. We'll just see if this appeals to anyone, or if my Aunt Joyce instead holds an open house supper at her place. She's hosting the post-funeral lunch, as my father's house won't really handle feeding 30 or so people.

It has been a fraught week. On Tuesday, my younger niece was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She was in the hospital until this evening getting the testing and insulin regimes started and having various classes along with her parents on how to manage this. I acted as bridge-baby-sitter for a couple of nights--help fix dinner, feed one parent, then stay with the other 2 kids while the parents swap places, repeat.

It's still in the air as to whether they will come to the funeral. The doctors say there's no reason to cancel the trip, but on the other hand they are all stressed, short on sleep, and struggling with lots of new things like injections and blood tests and counting carbs. They'll decide tomorrow, I think, after seeing how the night and part of the day go and how everyone is feeling. We've decided that Christmas present exchanges between adults can just wait. I like