Bethel Beach

Ooopsie.  The water seems to be draining out of the right-hand corner thanks to that slanted horizon.

These were taken several months weeks ago before my parents started encountering some pretty major health problems.

Again here, we're listing to the right a little.

I've all but missed the summer and have spent the past six weeks traveling from home to work to hospitals and now rehabilitation facilities to visit my father.  As of this moment, and entirely due to Middle Sister's diligence with the doctors and nurses, my father is holding his own.  But he's not home yet.

That's my main goal for him.  To come home.

Because life just can't seem to ever calm down, I've had a health scare of my own that is still unresolved.  For now, I'm just grateful my father is showing some signs of improvement, my mother is doing OK, and I have some breaks from work coming up which are long, long overdue.  The driving and the hectic season at work plus all the worries about my family have pretty much worn me down.

I look forward to the time when I can return to jogging, blogging and taking pictures of the serenity that surrounds me when I'm home.

Happy last week of August.

Clamming

Middle Sister

I'm only a month late, but here are more photos from our July 4 

clamming expedition on the East River.

Ronnie

Middle Sister and her fabulously wonderful boyfriend Ronnie did all the hard work of raking for clams while I took on the arduous task of supervising from the comfort of the boat.

If you've never been clamming before--and I hadn't--you pull the rakes through the mud and sand until something bites your ankle you hear something hard hit the rake.

Then you carefully pull the rake up and toss the tasty morsel into this ingenious contraption of a basket that floats courtesy of an inner tube.

Although I forget exactly how many we they caught, there was enough for several dinners.

And they were gooooooooooood.

There are several very serious reasons why I've been negligent in  every aspect of my life my blogging duties.  My mother was hospitalized for a week for a-fib.  They finally sent her home and she's resting until she can get back to see her specialist in a few weeks.  In the interim, a 3-hour surgery for my father ended up being 8 hours when the surgeon nicked his kidney and a vein, causing massive bleeding.  After being hospitalized for a week and then sent to a rehabilitation facility, he had to return to the hospital for a second surgery in the same place due to massive infection.  Right now, my sisters and I are taking turns spending the days and nights with him, because the staff in charge of his care at the hospital can't seem to keep the story straight, there are so many things to monitor.  His hospital is an hour away, so juggling regular duties, work and his caretaking have been a challenge to say the least.

Right now, he's supposed to be in the hospital for several more days before returning to the rehab facility in Gloucester for several weeks.  He's less than happy about this, so in addition to worrying about his physical state, we have to be strong and positive for him.

Hopefully he'll start to get stronger soon, but in the mean time I'll likely be absent from here until some aspect of life returns to quasi-normal.

I hope all is well in your world.