Christmas Day

Righto, it's time to tell you all about the weird and wacky adventures of Christmas Day 2011. I was smack-dab in the middle of making panettone french toast for Mom and Doug when the phone rang: it was Sandra. She instructed me to make my way over to my grandmother's house because my grandfather had been rushed to the emergency room earlier that morning.

As it happened, Nonno was quite ill early in the morning. Since my grandmother wasn't wearing her hearing aid, it was impossible for my grandfather to convey his ailment without actually seeing her. The clever beaver threw his slipper down the stairs to notify her that something wasn't quite right. I love it. Anyway, he couldn't breathe and was struggling a lot. They called my father but he'd turned his phone off at midnight mass, so they were a bit panicky. They called my Uncle Gary, who lives quite far away, and in the end, they had an ambulance pick him up and bring him to the General Hospital.

How nutty is this though? They wouldn't let my Nonna ride in the ambulance with him so the poor woman was stuck at home waiting to find out if her husband was going to make it. Seriously.

I picked her up and she was totally manic. She wanted to sit, she wanted to stand. She wanted to clean, she wanted to cook. In the end, she let me bread one cutlet before taking over in a huff, claiming I wasn't doing it right. Sigh. After they were breaded, I decided it was time to actually get to the hospital. The doctors had been in to see him, assessed it wasn't a life-threatening issue, and we could spend some time with him.

In we went, armed with a little food and an overnight bag for Nonno. We spent the day in the hospital, Nonna, my father, my uncle and myself (and Laura's brother Steve popped over for a visit after learning we were there). It was pretty funny, actually: we do enjoy each other's company. He was on a Bi-Pap machine, which aggressively forced air into his lungs. At one point we had to talk about life support and what his wishes would be if we weren't around to speak for him. It was a tough go. At about 6 pm, he was brought to a private room (what what!) and we left him for the night.

He's a trooper: he's home now (after nearly a week in lock-up the hospital) and sounds remarkably healed over the phone. I talked to him last night and all was good. The week that followed Christmas was full of time spent at the hospital and lordy did he feel bad about "ruining everyone's Christmas". Come on now...hospitals are a rip-roaring good time (insert exaggerated eye-roll).

In short, I want to apologize to Dani and Erin who I blew off without so much as a word after saying I'd hang out. Once the hospital visits were over for the week, it left me precious little time to be with the bebes. And we all know just how strongly I feel about time with the bebes.

I think I might spend Christmas away from here on out...magic of home or not ;)