If life's a highway, could you point me to the nearest exit?

2008 sucks. Well, for the most part...a lot of it. And then some of it doesn't. But right now in the moment and probably well into the future I'll think this was a really crappy time of my life. Then again, maybe so much heinous crap will happen in the future that this will look like small potatoes (okay, so I'm not good at looking on the bright side). Does anyone sense a rant coming on?

For a grand total of maybe 24 hours, I had that great beginning of the year feeling, where hey, it's time to start anew and maybe this year I'll accomplish my deliberately ambigous resolution to "be better." Alas, that great feeling of potential was squelched in record time when my grandfather had a heart attack on the morning of January 2nd. On the bright side, he made it through. But returning to sucky - he had to have bypass surgery, and he's currently ranked as "the healthiest person in the family," which doesn't really bode well for the rest of us, does it? So there were five days of visiting him in cardiac ICU before the operation. The day of the operation was among the longest on record, but he pulled through the operation and, we found out today, it was, for the most part successful, but he's still got lots of recovering to do.

I never realized how physically wearying it is to watch someone you love suffering or how mind-blowingly tiring it is to merely sit in a waiting room for all the waking hours of one day (or how well I can play a game of cards when I'm so tired I feel like I've been sedated). You would think that sitting in a waiting room for 14 hours in one day would afford me plenty of time to read about a zillion books. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to muster the intellectual fortitude necessary to do more than half-finish about 20 crossword puzzles. Yes, this story is on its way to what could be a happy ending, but gosh it's been a hard way to start a new year when all you desperately want to do is think that "this year things will be different." *sigh*

As it happens, I'm temping for the hospital where my grandfather is being treated. On the day of his heart attack I was supposed to have a job interview. For me, and I would hope for most people, the obvious decision was to reschedule the interview. In a moment of epic rottenness, the lady that was supposed to interview declined to reschedule. Whether this was because of my emergency cancellation or because she decided to not fill the job with a temp - what a kick in the head it was for me. I waited two weeks for this lady to come back from vacation to interview me, and what does she do? Shuts the door in my face. Talk about insult to injury. As it happens, this story has a semi-happy end, too. They managed to find me another job before my grandfather had even been operated on, but it's very part time, and I work in a lab which is just crazy for a person with an epic terror of collegiate lab science courses. So now, here am I, creatively inclined, liberal artsy, political science-y me brewing up solutions for the slide stainer and filing zillions of wax encased tissue samples into little drawers. Seeing as I've been waiting to be employed in my small town for oh, 4 months now, you would think this should have been a pretty happy time for me, but now it's just another hoop to jump through before I roll on up to the CCU to sit with my sick grandpa and whichever of my family members happens to be around and in need of a similar amount of emotional support.

So yeah, bear with me while I adjust to a few major life changes and advancing further into "grown-up-hood" which sucks kind of like the beginning of 2008. I'm catching up on my blog reading and obviously using my own blog as a therapeutic means of getting all this garbage out. Reading at a normal pace will, hopefully, resume in the very near future. In the meantime, you'll be happy to know, my crossword completion record has increased greatly over the last week.

All right, if you've stuck with me through all this immature ranting, you've earned the right to read this week's good news! I don't know if it's the influence of Buy a Friend a Book Week or that God knows that I use books in my mailbox as anti-depressants or simply that "book people" are awesome, but so many people from Bookcrossing/Bookobsessed have offered me free books (RABCKs) this week. I am astonished by, in awe of, and blessed by the kindesses of book lovers all the time - all the more right now, when it really helps to brighten up my day to have books in the mailbox after everything that's been going on.

In other shocking and pleasing news, I gave out one of my elite and coveted (hahaHA!) Leafy awards to A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly......and uh, she left me a comment on the post. For someone whose blogly reading base seems to consist of 4 or 5 people (hi to you 4 or 5 people - sorry about this post!), this was quite a fun surprise and a reminder that I'm not blogging in vacuum (again, uh, sorry about this post). She mentions being honored, but the honor is all mine. Cool, very cool. =)

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