I had a four-day-weekend this past weekend but, while it should have been a fairly mild time, it turned out to be a stress-filled pain.

The reason I was off was to help Jenn with some shoulder surgery she was having on Thursday. I’d need to be around to help while she was laid up with pain meds and I figured that would mean some food runs while she slept it off. Phoenix would stay with my parents until Saturday afternoon so we could get everything settled by weekend time. Get a little done around the house, take care of Jenn, no big deal, right?

Wednesday night my parents called up and cancelled because my mom’s cat, Xena, started having some health problems… and on Saturday she ended up having to be put down. She was 16, so I’ve known her almost half my life, and she was totally a part of the family. She always wanted to bite me for some reason, but I think it was because my dad liked to play with her and rile her up (which she loved) and she wanted to play with me, too. I’ll miss that bad little girl.

Anyway, that left us without a babysitter, so we got Jenn’s sister to cover for us. That worked out well – what a lifesaver! – except for the part where we weren’t planning on having Phoenix return until Saturday afternoon. Jenn’s sister had plans first thing in the morning so Phoenix came back early.

The early return wouldn’t have been a big deal except I promised my friend John I’d help him that morning to fix his Windows Home Server that went down during the week. So I had to cancel on him, which I feel bad about, but Jenn couldn’t handle the toddler all doped up and with only one arm working.

In the meantime, Thursday night I was told my grandpa (my last remaining grandparent) was in the hospital with a stroke, unable to move his legs. We found out later that it was something more like an infection of some nature, not a stroke, but still – hospitalized.

I didn’t blog it earlier, but Phoenix grabbed my glasses a couple of weeks ago while I was in the shower and Jenn took her eyes off her for like two seconds. I’m not sure how Phoe managed to rip the arm clean off the glasses, but she did, so I got to get new glasses. I picked them up on Tuesday… but by Friday they were driving me nuts. Straight lines were straight in the center of my lenses, but looked all curved the further away from center they got, sort of like looking through a mild fisheye lens. I took the glasses in on Friday and the optician said that indicates my eyes aren’t adapting to the lens material well. My old lenses were plastic, the new ones were polycarbonate. I ordered some new lenses made of a different material and handed back my glasses. I’ll be on my old/spare glasses for a week and a half or so. Fantastic.

The DST change didn’t help anything since Sunday we had to run a specific errand by 10:30a and we forgot about the time change so it really had to be done by 9:30a… so there was a lot of “Oh, crap, hurry up and get ready! Go! Go! Go!”

Sunday also marked my last day of prednisone. I’ve been fighting some Eustachian tube dysfunction for about a year now and the last few months my ENT has been trying to fight it with a bunch of different drugs… but it’s not working, and Sunday was my last day of my last ditch treatment effort, so I’m gathering it means I’m going to end up with a tube in my ear like you see on kids that get ear infections. I know it’s not a “big deal,” but it still scares the crap out of me, so there’s a low-level simmering going on in my mind about that. I’ll have to make another appointment, probably later this week or next, and find out.

Honestly, after all that, I really couldn’t wait to get back to work. Not that work isn’t stressful (particularly recently), but at least it’s a type of stress I can just bury myself in. Could it be worse? Sure, things can always be worse… but here’s hoping this week tapers off a bit.