Two Saturday's Aprons waiting in the wings, will have to wait a little longer

It's been a crazy week.

My mother had her knee replaced on Friday the 3rd. Everything went really well despite her numerous complicating medical issues, and they sent her home on Labor Day, feeling pretty good. It didn't last. Tuesday, she went back into the hospital with complications mostly centered around her blood thinners and how they affected all kinds of other stuff. I drove up there Wednesday night (thank you Dina for letting me just take off like that!) and I just came home this afternoon. So did she! She's back to feeling well and ready to take back up with learning to walk all over again. We feel we watched a miracle happen, as she was very sick (too sick for surgery), then okay for surgery but it was delayed, then doing quite a bit better and might not need the surgery after all, then doing even better and definitely didn't need the surgery, and then doing great, and then sent home. We are giving thanks.

Barry and Kieffer had to put on Lil Miss A's birthday party on Wednesday in my place, but it sounds like a good time was had by all, and the house was still standing when I got home. I really appreciate that they made it possible for me to go be with my parents like that. I didn't actually do all that much up there, just spent time with them - both of them at the hospital, and then with my father in the evenings and mornings so he didn't have to go home to an empty house.

We are blessed.

Oh, and a funny story: My parents, as I have mentioned about 40 times, are members of a Messianic Christian church in Hudson, Wisconsin. Thursday was the high holyday of Rosh Hoshanah, which of course they were missing because they were stuck in the World's Funnest Place, the hospital. So a contingent of folks from their church came to the hospital room that afternoon bringing shofarot (my new word of the day - plural of shofar is shofarot). That's ram's horn trumpets, in case you didn't know. Yes, I'm serious. They blew the shofarot (quietly) (with the door shut) in my mother's hospital room. It meant so much to my parents that the festivities were brought to them, and it was a sweet, if unconventional, thing to do. They also brought lots of food.

Want to hear what a shofar sounds like? (This is just a clip off YouTube, has nothing to do with Beth Immanuel's celebration. Also it's a lot louder than it was in the hospital.)