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It's time for a commercial break. Or at least a plain old break.

It seems like the past week was especially hectic, but I blame the lack of a weekend. There were times when I could swear I saw my precious and fleeting free time being sucked into a maelstrom. Hasta la vista.

An observation I made this past week is just how quickly time seems to slip away when you're inside the four walls of a hospital. My sister was in the hospital Saturday night and stayed through Monday morning. She was experiencing numbness down her right side and excruciating pain in her abdomen. After a late night and full morning of test after test, turns out she had gotten a bad kidney infection. She also had a migraine, and the migraine was so bad she wound up numb down her right side. There was a collective sigh of relief when the neurologist confirmed that she hadn't had a stroke and told us all her CT's and the MRI were normal and clear. Despite the fear and the desperation of waiting for test results and consults, it seemed like the time slipped away incredibly quickly. Every time I looked at the clock, it seemed like at least an hour had passed, sometimes more. Before I knew it, I had been there for twelve hours and was on my way home again.

There was some comic relief that came out of the 12 plus hours I spent hanging with Jess and the family on Sunday. Watching the Vikings/Cards game, we saw a sideline analyst wearing what looked like a football fanny pack. If you want to know the new name I gave the fanny pack, ask me off the record. Trust me, it will be worth it. And now anytime anyone in the family does anything, the challenge posed is "now do it with your right hand." There were plenty of "that's what she said" moments, but the best was when the phlebotomist was drawing Jess's blood and told her "I'm glad you weren't too hard" (that's what she said).

The excitement of the weekend was compounded by a very eventful first few days this week. When I got home tonight, I gave Steven a HUGE hug and sighed into his ear "I am soooooo glad we have NOTHING to do tonight." Finally rest. And five minutes to update the blog.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.