Family obligations

Amongst the normal chaos of two parents and three children with wildly divergent views of the world, we've been dealing with (or attempting to) a serious illness issue for Sarah's mom. Perhaps we've played it too loose because I had to travel a couple weeks ago and am supposed to travel again on Monday (to Atlanta). We're also supposed to take a (very infrequent) family vacation soon. Everything has been very fluid for weeks.

Dorothy has been in and out of ICU numerous times over the last few weeks and on Tuesday things looked really grim (everyone was in tears). Finally, we had to make a move and booked Sarah on a flight back east. Incredibly, despite the earlier problems at RDU, she was only 30 minutes late getting in (her connecting flight from Newark was 20 minutes late leaving). Fortunately, things are looking up and when we called last night, we caught Sarah relaxing with the family.

Being far away from all family has many aspects.

On the positive side, there is absolutely zero chance of having random family members drop in without notice and over the years the stream has dried up. Conversely, we have never had anyone else we could ask for help when things went wrong (as they inevitably do), so we've been totally on our own. Independence was never a big issue for us, but sometimes being far away from family (like right about now) can be more than inconvenient.

Our thoughts are constantly elsewhere...