Wired and Not Tired, so I'll Post an Angie Update

At around midnight we got home from taking Angie back to Chicago, after she had spent a week and a half with us while she recuperated from a very bad infection she had obtained following her recent appendectomy. She is doing a hundred times better than she was when we brought her down here; she still has a rather large gaping wound in her side for which she has to care, but she is mobile and able to function on her own again. I think I'm already experiencing a little bit of empty nest syndrome from her absence in our home, but I'm so relieved that she's healthy enough to go back to her independent life. Unfortunately, she still has a lot on her plate right now - aside from her own health problems, her dad was just admitted to the hospital yesterday due to an illness he's been struggling with for the past few weeks. When it rains, it pours...and Angie is experiencing a freaking monsoon right now. It was really difficult to leave her up there, knowing all of the stress she's having to deal with, and if it weren't for our darn cats who think they need to be fed or the darn jobs we seem to think we need to go to in order to pay the bills, we probably would have just stayed up there with her indefinitely. Like we could really do anything to make things better, but sometimes just being there for someone makes you feel like you're doing something.

On a positive note for her, however, she did get to reclaim her dog, Bailey, whose little nub of a tail I feared would fly right off of her with all the butt shaking (attempted tail wagging) she did at the very sight of her long-lost mommy.

During the drive home we stopped at Starbucks for some coffee. As usual, I opted for decaf, knowing that caffeine would keep me up through all hours of the night. And wouldn't you know it - I was up until 4:00 a.m., heart pounding and unable to sleep. I stayed up until two drafting this post, then spent an hour playing Sudoku, and finally another hour practicing the insomniacs' old fashioned method of tossing and turning in bed. Once asleep, I still managed to wake up about 150 times until I finally gave up on sleep around ten. Although my coffee was sweetened with the natural stuff, sugar doesn't affect me strongly enough to keep me up like that. Needless to say, I called in and am only going to work a half day this afternoon. Is a sugar buzz a good excuse for missing work? Probably not, so I'm going with the story that some punk kid barista at Starbucks spiked my supposed-to-be-decaf coffee with the real deal. Because you know, that's so much more an excusable reason to call in.