Absent

I've already gone missing for 16 days...yikes.  Eight of the days don't count, because I was deathly ill for six of them, and then the other two we were on a mini-vacation with the boys.  By deathly ill, I mean I'm pretty sure I had influenza, because I was knocked on my ass for 5 solid days.  So gross.  And by mini-vacation, I mean we took the boys to the Kalahari, which was an absolute exhausting blast.

So anyway, the last few days I've been meaning to post.  I have a ton of things to write about...my most recent book I've read (Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran), or my most recent addiction of subscription beauty box (Birchbox!! Ipsy!!).  But then I got home today and was getting dinner into the boys when my brother called.

"Hey," he said.  Pause.  "Have you talked to mom?"
"Yeah, I talked to her," I said back confidently. Because the last time my brother and I talked was over the weekend about Easter, and I said I'd call Mom about it.
But then there was another pause on my brother's end.  I'd said something wrong.  I added "I talked to Mom about Easter..."
"But have you talked to her...today...about what's going on?"  Fuck.  No.

So it turns out what's going on was my momma having chest pains, and checking her blood pressure at work (she works at a surgery center).  Her co-workers found out she wasn't feeling well, and did a quick EKG, and things weren't right, so my mom went to the hospital, where she was admitted and is currently having an angiogram to see what is going on.  She's gotten conflicting answers as to whether or not she's actually had a heart attack, but either way, it's scary as all hell.

All of the things I wanted to blog about before don't even seem worth it.  She's going to be fine, I KNOW she's going to be fine, but it's a huge wake-up call.  My mom is young - 53 - and heart disease runs in our family something awful.  My grandpa had a ridiculous number of heart attacks.  Nobody can remember for sure (which is sad in itself), but the common guestimate is 13.  See, ridiculous.  I'm already mentally changing our diet, our exercise (fine, lack thereof).  Thinking that my kids can't not know their grandmother, even though she's fine.  Fine.  Fine.