Emotional Crisis Time Here at the Homestead

shit, guys. i am FREAKING OUT! not because i've procrastinated like hell and not started on that presentation for the american society of plant biologists meeting this weekend. because i did that on monday. it's on the long side right now and needs to be pared down ('cause i really don't think i can get through 19 slides in 12 minutes, even talking at my usual light speedish pace), but that, my friends, is pretty much done (i'm almost as surprised as you are). the root of my current inner turmoil is infinitely more personal than being nervous about a talk.

i was at the sea lab yesterday, staring at a flat flat line and trying to use the awesome power of my mind to make peaks appear on the GCMS readout, when i got an unexpected phone call in the late morning hours from my mother. over the weekend, my uncle from south carolina came down and took my granny back up to SC with him to see his son's new baby. well, monday they had to take my granny to the hospital up there for her heart. i don't think she actually had a heart attack, but i'm not positive that she didn't. anyway, they had to put a catheter in her heart yesterday, and she needs a triple bypass. like, now. and she's 600 miles from home. at least she's with family. they say if they can't do the surgery within the next week, she'll die. so they're trying to give her some time to recover from the heart cath surgery and are planning to do the triple bypass on monday. in south carolina. and she lives in florida. so she's not too terribly happy about being far away from home. but she's not really fighting to come home, so that's good. my mom is planning to drive up and spend time with her this weekend (unless my granny gets worse, in which case my mom will rush right up there) and stay until after the surgery.

so my granny having open heart surgery on monday when chad and i are leaving for philly on wednesday is kind of weighing on me. there's another issue contributing to my emotional state as well, but i'm not quite ready to spill the beans about that one just yet.

so, for now i'm trying to distract myself from that touchy-feely-girly-freaking-right-the-hell-out crap by washing every piece of bedding in the house, cleaning the hell out of the floors and the kitchen and the bathrooms, and working almost non-stop. because sitting around watching tv leads to thinking about things that i don't want to think about right now. so if you guys don't mind, i'm just gonna live in a little fantasy bubble for a little while and pretend that nothing bad has ever happened to anyone i know.