Did you ever have one of those days where you feel like somebody let all the air out of you? That's how I feel today. The Hub - the man who can fix anything ( except computers. Rob is The Man Who Can Fix Computers) - managed to fix my digital camera so it works some, and I took this photo of Winston to give readers a remarkably accurate image of what I see when The Goober wakes me up in the morning. It's not exactly inspiring....especially if you add in his breath....

But I think I was "getting the nose" this morning on account of needing to use my inhaler. As the day went on it became apparent that The Hub has passed on his cold / flu to me....That's what marriage is all about right? Share and share alike! Exept HE doesn't have to huge doses of costly breathing medicine every time he gets sick. Still, I don't guess I can blame him. What was I gonna do? Tell him to go breath someplace else?

But the real reason why I feel so low is that my family has found out that my mom is having some heart problems. I don't want to go into it too much, since she isn't the kind of woman who would like the personal details of her health splashed all over the internet....but I'm sure she wouldn't mind some prayers. I'm sure I wouldn't mind a few either. Nobody wants to use "Mom" and "heart problems" in the same sentence. We've cancelled our walking program until she gets a green light from her cardiologist.

I think everyone feels, deep in their heart that THEIR mom is a saint who should never suffer - only my mom REALLY is. I mean, come on, imagine having This Winged Creature for your kid. My parents were perfectly prepared for "why is the sky blue?" and " Who built the mountains?" But can you honestly imagine having to have a conversation with your kid in which you try to answer "What do you mean you know it's the head of the worm cause he's going that way? How do you know all worms don't walk backwards?" or having to convince your rapidly-falling-behind-in-math first grader that 1+1 does NOT = 11 ? Or having your 7 year old ask you what made the Nazi's act the way they did or if good Muslims go to heaven. ( "For God's sake!" my beleagured father once cryed out at the dinner table, "Where does she GET this suff? How does she even know what a Muslim is? What DO you think a Muslim is?" And when I said that it was someone who thought that the Prophet Mohamed, not Jesus, was the person who preached the Word of God, for a minute I thought my Dad, who was working night and day to support us all, was going to just fall face first into the vanilla ice cream that he ate for dessert every night. I decided not to bring it up again. But, you see, I really thought my parents had the ANSWERS!!)

My mother's favorite, I think was my defense of a 7th grade classmate who brought a gun to school and pointed it at my friend Kirby on the morning school bus, "But, Mom, he's not all bad! He would never have done it if he hadn't been drunk at the time!" God bless both of my parents, it was a full time job getting it into my head that there could be such a thing as a fact, a value, a judgement, or anything besides gravity existing in the world that was not just a matter of so much OPINION. And even the gravity thing gave me problems "What if people really CAN fly but we just forgot how? After all, we all do it in dreams!" Thank God my brother was normal. Can you imagine being in labor with a kid for three days and then having that kid ask you, in all seriousness, "Are you sure I'm not from another planet? Are you sure you didn't just pull me out from under a rock somewhere? Are you sure my alien parents aren't going to come back to get me?"! I'm telling you, this woman does NOT deserve to have heart problems. It's just not fair!!

Of course, no one deserves to be sick. In Ecclesiates, my favorite book of the Bible, we are told, "....the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intellegent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all" Ecc. 9:11. Still, for once, I wish it were not so.