Oh, my goodness

Well, no real "quiet week" posts from me, because it wasn't a quiet week.

A couple days before Christmas, we had ice, and while coming home from the store, my mom slipped on the ice. The good news - if there's any good news in it - is she didn't break anything, but she either bruised a rib or pulled a muscle badly in her back.

As a result, I wound up having to do everything - all the marketing, all the cooking, all the cleaning, dishes for three people, and also jumping up to answer the phone or get people glasses of water, etc. (The joke in "A Christmas Story" about how Ralphie's mother hadn't had a hot meal in 15 years - because of everyone needing things - was not so funny this year). My dad has very bad osteoarthritis and can't do much, and also needs help getting up out of chairs and the like, so it literally was all on me for several days. That wouldn't have been SO bad, except I had the nagging worry of "What if this is something serious?" or "What if she's not better by the time I have to go back?" At first, she didn't want to go to a doctor but finally when she didn't get better after a day or two I took her out to the urgent care at the hospital they use - the doctor diagnosed it as a pulled muscle and told her to rest and put heat on it.

I cooked Christmas dinner (beef, Yorkshire pudding, sweet potato casserole, corn, two pies) all by myself. Normally we have more side dishes but I couldn't do any more. I baked stollen (the traditional German Christmas fruit bread) for the first time in my life (it was pretty successful). I made pie crust for the second or third time in  my life (it wasn't so successful).

I admit now I wasn't as gracious about things as I could have been, but (a) I was really very worried and being worried makes me short tempered and (b) My dad, God bless him, has always been the kind of person who "needed" things (his glasses from across the room, some old tax documentation he wanted to check for investment purposes, a glass of water) RIGHT when one is in the middle of doing three other things and I just can't multitask that way. So I was run pretty ragged from Wednesday the 22nd (the day after it happened) until just a day or so ago. Both my dad and I are on sodium-restricted diets and anyway there's really no good carry out near by so I did a lot of cooking. For me, if I'm tired or harried I can heat up a box of frozen vegetables and call it a meal but my parents are more used to meat and vegetables and starches - so it was more work. And there were the dishes to do after. (My mom has a dishwasher, but it's old, and also, she doesn't put ANY of the pots and pans in it, where I mostly bung the cooking utensils in mine).

At least she's getting better now but yipes, it was not a good Christmas this year :(