A lot of stuff has happened in the past few weeks. I am beginning to wonder if it's karma. Not sure I believe in karma though, and not entirely sure I even know exactly what karma is. But when bad stuff happens, it seems that people blame it on karma. As though it's a bad omen. Maybe it's just bad luck, bad planning and lack of attention to detail that has caused my unfortunate happenings of late. Or maybe it's karma. If so, what did I do to deserve bad karma? And more importantly, how do I change this bad karma?
Two weeks ago my computer hard drive crashed. It was under warranty and HP sent me a replacement hard drive, but I hadn't backed up the data in a while so I lost a lot of stuff...Sarah's senior pictures, her pictures of her French trip and lots of financial spreadsheets, that if I were to recreate would cause me great stress. Turns out the hard drive failure was a known Seagate drive error due to faulty firmware. Thankfully, Kroll OnTrack Data systems was able to unbrick my harddrive and retrieve my data. Thank goodness! But it came at a cost. Lesson learned...back up stuff DAILY (not just every couple of months!)
On Friday, my mother-in-law fell and shattered her femur. A bad jagged break and because of her osteoporosis her bones are like mush. It required a 4 hour surgery with 14 4" titanium screws and a plate to put her leg back together. Will she ever walk again? Well, that is yet to be determined. After surgery she will be in a wheelchair for approximately 3 months and then perhaps progress to a walker. She's 83 and in good spirits, but I do think once the gravity of the situation hits, she will be very upset. A loss of independence is very difficult at that age. She's a strong woman and these kinds of set backs are going to hit her hard. The family is looking into a nursing home for the recovery and then assisted living.
My grandmother is also having difficulities. She has an AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm) which is quite enlarged and causing discomfort. Not to mention the fact that she has congestive heart failure and COPD. I love her dearly but at times I resent the fact that my mother doesn't step up to the plate and help out more often. I feel it's her responsibility, not mine, to be the one to always help out. Because she lives 1200 miles away makes it rather difficult to help daily, but I'm the granddaughter, not the daughter. And when all this stuff happens at once, I get irritated that she doesn't help more often.
I worry too about swine flu. Jake and Kristin had it. Now they are immune, thank God! But Sarah and Jim, the two with asthma that could make the illness far more complicated and life threatening have not had it yet. I worry about their health and hope and pray that they will be able to get the vaccine before they get the illness.
I'm off to DC in about 20 minutes. Need to wrap this up for now. I've had a glass of champagne already, even though it's only 7:49 am. Flying gets me a bit nervous the older I get. Hoping for a safe trip and the end of bad karma.
