I'm a little late in saying this, but I do hope none of you were too badly affected by Superstorm Sandy last week. We lost my brother Tom for a while—text messages and emails unanswered, phone straight to voicemail, a low-grade alarm mounting everso slightly as the hours ticked by—but he turned up in the end and he was fine.
Remember when I said there was nothing quite so scary as waking up to an email with the subject line "MUM IN HOSPITAL"? Well, it turns out there is. Here is the thing that is scarier than waking up to an email with the subject line "MUM IN HOSPITAL": it's getting an IM from your sister in the middle of a meeting that says "Can you call dad? Mum has collapsed and been taken to hospital in an ambulance."
Wait, wait, wait—before I have an important update about mascara, I have an important update about the ear balls. Thank you all for being so kind about the ear balls—and also for being game enough to refer to them as ear balls in your comments, which made me cackle with glee every single time—but it turns out that my mother doesn't have ear balls after all. No ear balls! It's a negative on the ear balls! Instead, it has been determined that she has something with an even crazier name.
As I climbed under my duvet just shy of 2am on Tuesday morning, I realized that out of the last twelve nights, I'd spent exactly one in my own bed. That sounds rather scandalous and exciting, until I clarify that most of them have been spent in other people's spare bedrooms. Wait, that still sounds kind of scandalous and exciting. Huh, except maybe not so scandalous. Or exciting.
