Everyone keeps asking me how I'm doing it with Nathan gone so long.  "How are you holding up?"  "I don't know how you do it!"  And my favorite, "You are such an inspiration!"

HA!

I am surviving on a mix of yelling, procrastination, and chocolate.  And I'm a little sleep deprived.  I think that helps.  (Well, it certainly helps with the procrastination and leads to the yelling, anyway.)

I also try to remember that I don't have it anywhere so difficult as Abigail Adams had it.  Let's face it, she was alone with 4 kids during a war.  (I've got the kids, but there's no local war, no shortages of pins, soap, or sugar.  No smallpox.)  She had a brutal winter.  (I've got that, too, but my landlord has a snow blower, and if I don't want to go outside, I don't have to.  No cows to milk here.)  She was often out of contact with her husband for weeks at a time due to the wonky mail.  (We never get mail on Tuesdays--so some wonkiness remains--but we do have Skype!)  And poor Abigail had no Lindt chocolate.

So, all things considered, I'm doing just fine.

But my grandfather is not.

I posted not too long ago about how he couldn't keep his O2 levels up and within a few days of that post he was in the ICU on all kinds of machines and medications.  Several days and several tests later the doctor finally broke the news that he was not going to come back to us.  The arrangements are being made now to bring my dad back from Afghanistan for.... I don't know.  My aunt refuses to do anything without my dad.  So Grandpa is being kept alive by machines and is deteriorating rapidly.  I can only hope Heavenly Father takes the decision out of her hands.  But at the same time, we want him to be able to go to Hospice so he doesn't die in the hospital.

No matter how it ultimately happens, though, we've lost our grandpa.