Waiting for . . .

If all has continued to go well overnight, my mom is getting ready to get a kidney.

Yeah; I know; wouldn't that be a great solstice present?

She called me yesterday morning and said she was second for a specific kidney and she couldn't eat or drink anything after noon. Last evening she said she was a match for it, and last I talked to her, about 10:30 last night, they were on their way to the hospital. The organ was coming from out of state and she was supposedly getting it this morning if all goes well. Obviously, there are any number of ways that things could fuck up--is it really truly a match for her? how will the surgery go if it is? will her body accept the kidney?--but in the several years she's been on the list, this is the closest she's ever gotten. And our grim sense of humor is intact--she was saying yesterday that they already had her blood, and I pointed out that they could have saved the sponges from cleaning up her hospital room a few weeks ago.

Friend and I took off on Monday to celebrate his 50th birthday--and by "celebrate" I mean we went out for breakfast, got the oil changed in his vehicle, got a couple of carpeting issues solved for him (a rug under his computer stuff, instead of the patchwork of throw rugs under various table legs and chairs, and a runner near the back door, rather than another patchwork of small rugs, and a couple of those draft-prevention thingies), took a long walk in the woods--at two different points, we were surrounded by about 15 deer, with the closest about ten yards away, and we easily saw 40 deer over the course of the walk--and then went out for a fabulous dinner at this little hole in the wall. Sunday we went to the hockey game, and Saturday night we went out to hear some live music. Last night we were out again--for the fourth night in a row, so how about a personal shout-out to my liver for hanging in there.

Tonight and tomorrow morning I have some baking to do, because we're heading up to his family (mom plus sister & family live there, and brother and family are coming in). I've met his siblings before, but not his mom, so no pressure there. He keeps telling me not to fuss too much trying to bake too many things, and I take his point, but I really cannot bring myself to show up to someone's holiday celebrations empty-handed. So tonight I'm going to make some kind of graham crackers--probably shaped as very small tart shells--that I can fill with chocolate ganache and top with some meringues, because who doesn't like little chocolatey snacky things. I'm also going to make a batch of "toast bread," as they called it in school, and probably do a loaf as cinnamon bread and part of it as pecan rolls, because the formula is close enough to my grandmother's sticky pecan rolls that I can adapt. The bread is a nice basic bread recipe and doesn't require any kind of preferment, so I can put it to multiple uses. I have a couple of apples I need to use up, so I could even use those as a filling for the rolls or something. We haven't decided whether we're going up tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning; that decision is weather-dependent, and, given that I'm not doing the driving, I'm also not the making the decision. Either way, I need to be prepared to head out tomorrow.

I'd really like to make the soft pretzels, but they're a Project, what with the boiling in baking-soda-infused water (because, no, I'm not going to be using lye at home, thanks so much). Maybe over new year's or something. And I want to make sure to bring the crepe recipe, in case I get an opportunity to whip up a batch for breakfast one morning. That's enough contribution to make me happy. If Friend and I get a chance to take over the cooking for a meal or two, hey, all the better, but showing up with a desserty thing and a couple of breakfasty things in hand will do.

I'm exhausted at the moment, however, not least because I woke up at 3:30 or so this morning, and my brain informed me that there would not be any more sleep. Work has been an annoying hassle: I have a few things that must be done in the next three work days (I'm taking off next Monday as well, and we get the Thursdays and Fridays off, so it's today, and next Tuesday/Wednesday), but of course actually getting to those things has been challenging, not least because our financial person is running around setting everyone's hair on fire--deficit! debt! problems!--but not providing any actual fucking detail for the panic, so I end up having to drop everything to deal with the fires s/he is setting. Whereas, you know, s/he could actually do some useful analyses, say, and determine just what the problem might be, if, in fact, there IS a problem, about which I have yet to be convinced. Because I actually review our financials, line by fucking line, and my hair has not combusted, spontaneously or otherwise. Also? This person does crap behind the scenes, doing accounting tricks, and then we're supposed to deal with them. Which, again, more pain in the ass for yours truly.

Not that I'm annoyed by this or anything.

So, today, I will try to get the proposal written, and I'll do the monetary things I need to do, and I'll carry my cell phone around, hoping that it rings and that the person on the other end is a family member telling me that mom has a new organ.