down the long hall toward the O. R.

So, update on the fam. My one remaining parent and my one remaining grandparent are both having surgery in two different states on the same day. Which is today, Friday, leap day, 2008. They're going down my mother's throat for some reason, to fix a slipped disc in her neck, in her spine - something's slipped off her puppet strings and she's weak. Grandma has a slew of gall stones in her gall bladder and throughout. Is it so many years of black coffee, at least 3 cups before noon every single day since coffee was rationed, since we were not a wealthy family and one time Grandma fed her husband and four children with a big sack of potatoes. For a month. The telephone company went on strike and my Grandpa was in the union. 3 cups of coffee before noon, and coffee until lunchtime. In the afternoons she switches to water, and at dusk she switches to wine and starts it all over in the morning.

coffee
water
wine

So, these, my two non-feminist feminists - my grandmother, until recently, approaching 74, has been mowing yards, hillsides, murdering weeds with a machete, built a house after grandpa went on. Will not tolerate disrespect. my mother who left my father after years of manipulation, control and calling her an idiot [imagine! she still thinks she's not very smart!] She left him in tears because he finally realized that she didn't meet his standards, but as we visited him in the hospital, in the cardiac ICU 5 years after he divorced her, he realized that she surpassed all of his expectations. He lost the most special gift that life had ever given him. He was her friend, but that's all she allowed. He had not earned her love, but she gave it to him anyway.

My mothers are sick, and I can't be with them. I think it's outrageous that my employer will not grant me leave time to see them. It's a great company, sure, and if it were the parents of someone in management, you wouldn't see their face any day that a family member were ill. Nosirree.

And my homework is piling up, but there's too much on plate... There's just too much on my plate...

heartbeat can't catch up, parched my singing cave,
i ripple down hill in search of cold water.