Musings and Things that are Bothering Me

So my husband is flying home from Uganda right now.  As I write this he may be over Libyan airspace.  I don't know for sure because the apps that track where the plane is in the sky aren't working today (maybe haven't worked for a long while or ever) for flights in the air in northern Africa, which is for the best if it helps him get home safely.

It's not a direct flight.  There is no direct flight to Uganda from anywhere in the US that I'm aware of.  He left the day after the new global warning on travel to Africa in particular.  So I've been worried about him although he's assured me he is no where near terrorists or pirates (seriously - pirates on the East Coast of Central Africa is apparently a problem according to the travel advisory).  He'll be back about twenty-four hours after he left.

The time he's been gone has been difficult.  School starts for all of us next week, and we had lots of things to do over the last two weeks.  My little one misses his dad tremendously when he's gone and had an especially hard time because of something inconsiderate a family member said in front of him.  It's even harder for him when I am stressed out, and this particular family member has done her best to make me as stressed as possible.  This week has been hard for me and my little guy. 

Just before my husband left (about two weeks ago), I had more problems with the nerve in my foot, so my doctor squeezed it real hard to verify that's where it hurts.  Yes, that was the spot.  And he made the whole thing worse without doing anything to make it better.   

And what I thought would be a rather routine doctor appointment for something else yesterday ended with a biopsy in the office with no pain meds and no husband to drive me home or comfort me or help with my child.  On the up side, it turns out I'm tough enough to have a good sized amount of me removed without meds.  (I know how much because he showed me, which I have to say was totally unnecessary and really gross.)

Just after that, my mother revealed to me a family history for a disease that might affect me - information I needed to know a very long while ago.  Apparently, she thought I somehow knew without ever being told.  She wasn't malevolent about it - it seemed to be an honest mistake, an enormous oversight. 

After researching this history with other family members just to be sure I had absolutely all the facts, I was told other sad things about my family, nothing recent, but sad stories about people that are long gone but very much missed.  And I'm finding myself very affected by it. 

My class starts next week. It's a creative non-fiction class (I dropped the fiction class due to a conflict with soccer for preschoolers).  I intended to write about my family (mostly the ones who are gone) and the research I did about them that led me to the novels I'm writing. 

Although I'm purposefully talking around the details off all of these things that are bothering me, I have a feeling it will give me a lot to write about in this class. 

After getting the homework, it seems that the goal of the class is to write "truth" with a personal perspective using literary techniques one would normally use to write fiction.  That sounds like just my thing.  And a lot of work...with the potential for a lot of tears.