For This I Am Grateful (A Few Days Late)

Whew.  It's been a hectic couple of days.  For the past 4 I've hit the ground running in the morning, and then it's been like a race to the finish.  Every.  Day.  I was so exhausted last night that I couldn't even stay awake to watch the Steelers game.  From what I read today, that was probably a good thing, but still.  Life's been crazy busy, I'm thoroughly exhausted, and it's only the very beginning of our month of insanity.  Hold me.....then bring me some coffee, please.

Anywho, here's the current list:

• That I survived last week.  Tuesday alone was so hellish that it made me cry.  Seriously.  It was BAD.  Somewhere around mid-afternoon when I composed myself well enough to call my mom, my dad (just back from one of his cancer treatments) informed me that my mom was at the hospital because my grandmother had just been admitted to the ICU.  I might have snapped a little at that point.  A cosmo and a shake weight commercial were put in charge of cheering me up a bit that evening.
• That my grandmother was discharged yesterday and is back at home.  It's a continuing saga.  Her aortic valve is new, but everything else is still 94 years old (and kind of freaking out).  And her cardiologist just plain sucks.  He's an ass.  I'm not sure how my mother and aunt have refrained from punching him in the face thus far.  
• On to happier notes: That both my husband and I were able to attend Eva's Halloween party at school last week.  They had a parade in the gym (OH, THE CUTENESS!), had some craft time, and played some Halloween bingo.  Good times.
• That we celebrated my niece's 1st birthday last Saturday and got to spend time with family.  She's definitely learning to ham it up for the camera and watching a kid discover cake for the 1st time is always fun.
• That Eva got to spend lots of quality time with her grandparents (my in-laws) while they were up this weekend.  Forget Halloween, when they asked her at school this morning about her weekend, she went on and on about how she got to play with Nana and Papaw.
• That we got to go out Saturday night and act like a couple of college kids (sort of).  There was a bar crawl and it was superhero-themed.  (These are the kinds of things you get talked into when your best friend plays rugby.)  We had fun.....despite one of us forgetting that he can't drink like he did in college.  Ahem.  
• That we had fun trick or treating with Eva last night.  She's getting the hang of it.  We even put on our costumes for the outing.  Note to self:  The end of October tends to be chilly and windy.  No costumes with skirts (particularly of the short variety) for me next year.  Wonder Woman apparently does not care about staying warm.
• That I managed to run 3.15 miles without stopping this morning.  According to Run Keeper, I hadn't run that far outside since August 24th.  Between the amount of time that had passed since running that far (not to mention consistently), my aforementioned exhaustion, and my asthma coupled with the fact that it was 40 degrees out when I started, I did not have high expectations for this run.  I had to try it out though, as we agreed to run a 5K with my SIL and her fiance in North Carolina on Saturday.  My time was rather miserable, but I'm just happy that I didn't have to stop and walk or use my inhaler.  Wish me luck on Saturday.  I'm gonna need it!

Waiting patiently