Many things monday

Man, what a week! Since I missed the five things on Friday... here are as many things as I can remember that have happened in the last week:

• Tuesday, July 30: My mom went into the hospital with AFib symptoms again. Her heart rate was high and she was having trouble getting her breath. She had the neighbor take her to the Kewanee Hospital. They were able to get the fluid out of her lungs, but she did not respond to any medicinal attempts at lowering the HR. So she lay there until Friday waiting for them to find a hospital they could transfer her to that would do a cardioversion. I swear, I can't believe more people aren't up in arms about how worthless our healthcare system is. These small towns essentially have none. You know, because the giant organizations that run them all can't support all their administrative personnel by serving the actual needs of the people. Ugh. It pisses me off!
• Wednesday, July 31: Our Air Conditioner officially died. I've been toying with it for several weeks and finally had to call someone to look at it and tell me it needed replaced. I already knew it did. Roughly five years ago a repairman gave it a shot of freon and said it was on its last leg. The guy that came on this day said it would take about half as much to repair it (maybe) than to replace it, and it wouldn't last very long. So I agreed to pay the $5,500 and schedule a replacement for Monday. Which meant we had to go the rest of the week/weekend with no AC. Oddly enough, you do kind of get used to it. We did our best to cover windows and not run the oven, dishwasher or dryer. I think 81F was the highest it ever got inside.
• Thursday, August 1: I went to Buda to see my mom, and Carrie did too. We drove separately - her taking the "longer" route and me taking what's supposed to be the quicker route (through Gary/Joliet). I had one stretch of about 15 miles that took me 3 hours to get through, so the usual 4 1/2 hour trip turned into a more than 8 hour trip. Ugh. I went straight to the hospital and Carrie had been there all afternoon. Of course, later that night when I went to mom's house, as I pulled the front door closed the doorknob came off in my hand. So I was going to need to repair that the next day.
• Friday, August 2: I went over and saw mom in the morning, picked up a new door handle, replaced it, and then headed back to Fort Wayne early afternoon. As I was driving apparently a room opened up in Galesburg so they transferred mom there and scheduled a cardioversion for Saturday morning. Carrie stayed another day. I did not want to drive through the Chicago area again, so I planned to go via Peoria/Indianapolis like Carrie did. When I got to route 17 at Tanners Orchard I decided at the last minute just to turn there. It took me on two-lane roads almost straight east and ended up saving me a half hour (so it took 5 hours). I think I took routes 40, 17, 115, 45/52, 14, and 114 - along with a few blacktop connecting roads. It wasn't bad and I was able to fly down those country roads.
• Saturday, August 3: I had originally planned to pick mom up on Thursday to take her to Isaac & Ricci's baby shower in Indianapolis on this day. Obviously she wasn't coming, but the rest of us were all going because Isaac & Ricci were going to be there. The shower was at Ricci's mom's house. We arrived just after noon and the shower was from 2-4. Carrie drove there from Galesburg, and Drew brought their kids down. It was nice to see some of Ricci's family and many of their friends from college and beyond. Drew Carrie left around 4 because it was also his 20th class reunion that night. Jane and I left about 5:30 because she was driving directly to Buda to stay with my mom (who got home from the hospital Saturday afternoon) and I was driving Carrie's car back to our house. It was nice to see Isaac & Ricci but I wished there hadn't been so many things going on and it hadn't been so rushed (and hot).
• Today, August 5: The AC guys arrived right about 8AM. I had already done my run and taken a shower. They worked until afternoon replacing the outside unit, the coils on the furnace, they also replaced some pipes and did a few other things. It was 81 when they turned the AC back on, and at 5PM it finally cooled down to 74 on the thermostat. Jane left my mom's in the afternoon when my mom's sisters arrived. She should be home in another hour or so (hopefully). I am trying to catch up on laundry, dishes, and whatnot. First off I washed our sheets because I soaked them pretty good sweating during the night.

And... that's about all I can think of right now. It kind of wore me out just thinking about it again. Ugh.