Bad day

I wish this day would get over with. It has not been good. In fact, it started off bad last night. My parents called and said our dog, Charlie, had died yesterday. He was a lab/mutt that my parents adopted from us when we moved to Ohio (before moving to Indiana). He was too big to live in our apartment. We knew he had cancer for several months now. He was 13 - which is 91 in dog years (according to the vet).

Then, like losing an hour due to the time change wasn't enough, I knew this morning would be awkward anyhow. Jane and Robin (keys & singer) weren't due back from the women's retreat in Ohio until right before the worship service, so we were going to go without a practice or sound check. It's not *real* necessary, and we *can* get by without one, but I just like everyone knowing what's going to happen with transitions and making sure monitors are set and whatnot.

What I wasn't expecting was the text message at 5 am to call Jane IMMEDIATELY. I naturally thought it must be about Carrie, since she got sick at the retreat yesterday. Instead Jane said SHE had been up since 3:30 with a serious pain under her ribs on the right side. She finally woke Robin up and had her take her to the emergency room in Findlay. I didn't like not being there and not knowing what was going on.

Then the drummer calls and says he has a sore throat and won't be there. He is also the high school sunday school teacher, and the backup sound board guy.

As people started to show up, there was a little "misunderstanding" with someone whom I've been having a lot of "misunderstandings" with lately.

Then the greeter shows up and says she doesn't want to greet today because she has a cough.

Then it's time for the service to start... and no sound guy.

So today we had me leading on acoustic guitar and vocals... and that was it. And I don't know that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, but unless you've ever led worship, and done it by yourself... it's a little unnerving in and of itself, let alone when you've not done a sound check, and there is no one to check it anyhow, and you WEREN'T FREAKING EXPECTING TO DO IT. But... it went okay. I dropped one song, moved some things around, and we just did "There's Power In The Blood", "Nothing But The Blood", and "I Surrender All." Actually, these are all very guitar-friendly anyway, and I like the way we do them.

I finally heard that they'd done an ultrasound on Jane and found she had gall stones. They gave her some pain meds and discharged her. Luckily she already had a doctors appointment for tomorrow. She finally arrived home a little after noon, and is still in some pretty serious pain.

I headed to Bluffton to get her prescriptions filled, and I had switched cars with Isaac on Friday because he said his was acting up. Of course it hadn't acted up on me... UNTIL I went to get the meds. I bought some STP and made it there and back. And the pharmacy didn't have either kind of meds prescribed, so it took over an hour before they called the Findlay hospital and found suitable replacements.

And we were supposed to go to Muncie tonight to hear son Isaac's band play, but we won't be going anywhere at this point. And... son Isaac has been in the snowstorm in Cincinnati all weekend, and isn't answering his phone, so I'm not sure where he is anyway.

Yep, this is a sucky day. At least the sun is shining. And my ear feels almost normal. And the Illini won yesterday. And... ahhhh, it's still sucky.