My preparation for the empty nest was very short-lived as Katie and Emma returned home in January. Why'd they return home? Well, turns out the reason Katie was having headaches, and had been having them since Thanksgiving, 2 1/2 months prior, was because she had three different appliances (one serious, one minimal and one within normal ranges) leaking carbon monoxide into their apartment since they moved in.
So, while dealing with Dave's imminent departure from this world, I was also dealing with much, much research on the subject of CO exposure. In fact, the day that I determined that CO was the cause of her headaches, I was watching Dave and Cheryl's grandson so that they could attend one of the many worker's comp hearings. When they picked up Kylar, Dave was the one hugging me and comforting me. Here he was, just about a month before he left this world, fresh from a hearing that he knew would be his last, and he was comforting me. That was Dave.
The CO stuff hit me initially with a wave of "what could have been." It's mellowed out so that that part of it rarely hits me any more. Now we're just thankful that Katie and Emma weren't injured any more than they were. Katie's recovery has been very slow. She still has headaches. Her memory is still VERY faulty. On the good side, though, her personality has started to come back to the Katie we had before she moved into the apartment. When she's testy (bitchy) now, it's usually because of some external stimuli and not because her brain is injured. She still forgets words and has some retrieval problems, but she's slowly improving. I'm very thankful God was watching over the girls and sent me the epiphany. Of course it was from Him. That's what an epiphany is.
So the empty nest didn't exactly happen. (Especially since India also came home off and on through the year.) I did have that extra room for a while because Emma was in with Katie the first few months they were back. That was silly, though, when I look back on it. What was I thinking? Why didn't we just put Emma in the other room? Selfish me. I know Katie doesn't want to be here any longer than they have to. They're welcome as long as they need to be here. I'm just glad we're able to help out. (I'm also very happy we didn't have to deal with any PTSD.) Time will tell.
I'm thankful Cherlyn, Rob, Bobby and Michael were here last Christmas. I'm glad they were here in October. I wish they were going to be here NOW! Better yet, I wish we were all there!!
Mike asked me last night, "How can you be homesick for a place you've never been?" Or something along those lines. He was looking at Cherlyn's pictures of England I think. It's strange how we both felt like we'd 'come home' when we were there. I miss over there more than I've ever missed Hawaii after we've come back from vacationing there. Can't we just get a little vacation cottage in a quiet English village and live there a few months out of the year??? Anyone want to give us a million dollars? :o) BIG smiles.
I'm not sure what the Christmas day plans are. I wish Pat and Pete were going to be around and that we'd thought to get the 26th off. He has the 24th off but I told him it's ok for him to not take vacation that day and see if someone else wants it. He's off at 6 anyway so it's not like we need it and maybe it will help someone else. India will be home Christmas Eve night and that'll be good. I still need to figure out what to make for dinner. Hmmm. Much to do still.
Time to get going and get some stuff done around here.
