Yay (in the universally needed sarcasm font)

Last night Hubby called me upstairs to speak in private - even though the kids were already in bed.  That's one of the things you have to do when you have your mother living with you.  So we go upstairs and he tells me that Father-in-Law is discussing stopping his chemo.  If he does this the end is likely very near, frankly I've never heard of anyone living this long after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.  Hubby is rightfully upset, but is handling about as well as one could expect.  In the wake of this news Hubby has decided he is going to go up and visit this weekend and camp and deer hunt and stay with his dad.

I can't say I'm excited about his weekend trip.  I'd be a selfish witch to throw a fit, but to be honest Hubby has been gone A LOT in the last two months.  Some of the trips work related, some  really cool but work related (France) and then the duck hunting trip and a quick stop-in up north to see his dad.   I feel as if the whole family rides on my back lately - I guess it does.  I have day dreams of going out to get a gallon of milk and not coming home for two or three days.  I'm pretty sure they'd still be out of milk when I decided to come home so I really wouldn't be escaping anything, just letting it pile up.  There's nothing I can do about it though, it just is.  I'll manage, I don't have a choice.

 In other news...  Sonny Boy was awarded the Sportsmanship Award for his team.  It's the only award given out by the league to an individual team member.  Hubby and  I knew about it roughly a week before the presentation and managed to keep it secret and told him a bunch of baloney about why we were attending the championship PeeWee game on a miserable cold Sunday morning.  Sonny Boy was pretty surprised.  I think in this picture he was just really cold.  I had on my biggest, warmest coat and was still not comfortable.  Late season football in Wisconsin is for the birds Packers.

Mom's shoulder is on the mend.  She still doesn't have a full range of motion of course but it's getting better.  Unfortunately she's back to smoking cigarettes which yanks my chain.  It's also been difficult getting her to do her PT on it as well.  Many days she's still not getting dressed.  I'm doing my best to ignore the crazy per Hubby's advice but often I loose my marbles.  Mom did go to the shrink last week and she changed her anti-depressants around, upped one, reduced another.  I can't see any difference.  The shrink seemed to think her lack of doing anything was because her blood counts and the like were off so she was sent for blood work which came back improved from the last numbers she had while in the hospital.  I don't, for one minute, think Mom's behavior is actually because she doesn't feel well.  Yesterday she managed to fall on her can while unloading the dishwasher.  Luckily no real damage done except to her ego.  Note she was only unloading the dishwasher as I had specifically asked her to.  Beginning to wonder if she'll even be able to function in her own place when her disability ever comes through.

Igor had an appointment with the orthopedic doctor yesterday at Children's Hospital.  He looked at his feet, looked as his back, looked at his chest.  We discussed his lack of specific diagnosis to his connective tissue disorder.  Igor has many of the attributes of Marfan's, but not enough to classify him (plus he's been genetically tested for it) so not Marfan's, other connective disorders have been ruled out as well.  It doesn't really matter I suppose, but it would be nice to give a good wrapped up name for it so doctors can run out of the room and google and pretend to know exactly what all the complications are.   I had the doc look at Igor's chest as sometimes in Marfan's -the closest seemingly to whatever he is - the chest cavity either has a sunken appearance or a bowed out appearance.  Sometimes this can become severe enough to require surgery.  Anyway I though Igor's chest was beginning to look a little odd, but honestly he's so skinny I couldn't decide if something was different or he's just so skinny.  The doctor seemed to think his sternum area was a little sunken but not enough to worry about.  So we watch and wait.  Igor goes back to the orthopedist in one year.  Now we are on a yearly rotation for all speciality doctors which is a good thing.  Hopefully the trend will continue and I can start smooshing all the appointments together to make one or two trips a year as opposed to spreading them all out because it sure is a PIA to drive for and hour to go to a 15 minute appointment.

I'm beginning to think my house will never be clean again.  I sure thought that with both kids off at school during the day I would start to make headway, but I can't say that's true.  If anything it's somewhat worse as now they drag home reams of paper daily, have projects strewn near and far and jackets hanging on all available surfaces.  Mom is no help.  She will do a chore if I specifically ask her to, however it's such a half-assed job.  Mom's version of cleaning the kitchen is loading the dishwasher, she doesn't hand wash the few knives and pots that can't go in the dishwasher, she doesn't wipe down the counters or clean off the kitchen table, she doesn't throw away many items of garbage that may have accumulated on the counter.  I clean the kitchen up takes 30 minutes, she cleans it takes 10 and she declares she's worn out and does nothing else the rest of the day.  Yeah thanks for all of your help.

Well, here it is, late again.  I'm going to go crawl in bed so I can look forward to four days in the nut house with no relief worker (Hubby).