This Day

Oh, Lord, this day.

It has been one hell of a day.

My father has been in the hospital since  Monday. I’ve been here most of the time, too. By most of the time, I mean until tonight I had only left this hospital for two hours to take a shower at Tina’s house.

This morning started with a gut punch and a mini-breakdown. Things will be fine. Just, sometimes, things punch you in the gut when you don’t expect it. It meant my entire family spent the day in hurry up and wait mode. There is this certain knot that lived in my stomach, and will continue until to be there until things get figured out.

Other things happened as the day went on though. My sister, my brother-in-law, and my baby niece spent some time with us. My niece has my heart. I was almost broken this morning, but something about a laughing, smiling baby makes things seem better.

Then the Viking picked me up and took me away from here. I ate a meal away from the hospital. He also got me a little drunk on a margarita, and then he came back and sat with me for hours because I am too neurotic to be away from the hospital too long.

The best part though, the very best part:

This morning my 8th or 9th grade Civics teacher walks into the cath lab waiting room. We kinda recognize each other, but we are in a damn hospital with loved ones with cardiac patients, so we don’t catch up. Later, I notice he and his family move into our hospital wing.

Then tonight I pull the Viking into this little room with a couch in the family waiting room and my old teacher is there. I turn to the Viking and say “Now, where the hell are we supposed to make out?”

Yep.

I apologized to him later, but seriously, it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I took it.

Bad days get better, but sometimes I need to let myself acknowledge the stomach punches, because it makes fucking with old coaches that much better.