Huge Sigh of Relief

A month ago, I received a summons to appear for jury duty on December 2nd. This has been hanging on my neck, dragging me down for quite some time. I wasn't sure exactly how this was going to work out. I have no sitter. My littlest guy would have a really hard time being left with a stranger (as hard a time as I would have leaving them with a stranger). The director of Parent's Day Out did offer to allow them to come extra days, but that would only provide morning supervision.

At first, my mother-in-law planned to come for the first day of the jury selection. Then, she wasn't able to come until Wednesday afternoon. My husband spoke with his employer and managed to switch his normal day off (Monday) to Tuesday this week, so that he would be home with them for at least the first day, until we learned if I would be selected for the jury.

Next, we realized that my ES was scheduled for a follow-up appointment regarding his stomach issues this morning at 8 a.m. This meant that I would have to drive all three boys to the appointment. A mother of one of ES's friends did offer to keep them this morning, but that would again mean leaving them with a stranger. Finally, my husband called his supervisor and asked if he could come in late this morning. Thankfully, she agreed.

I was thrilled my husband took ES, since the roads were snowy and quite slick this morning. In fact, last night ES heard sirens racing by our house and he looked out his window to see a burst of flames down the road. We don't know all of the details yet, but think that a car slid off the road, hit a telephone pole and exploded. At first, ES thought it was cool, to see a car on fire out his window. Then, it began to dawn on him that someone may have died in this accident. The thought that it could be one of his friends really hit him. I think he had a hard time falling asleep last night.

The nurse-practitioner who checked on ES this morning said that the biopsy results came back negative for a lot of things: celiac, lactose intolerance, even H. Pylori. However, this doesn't mean that he doesn't have H. Pylori, because it could have been that the particular spot which was biopsied merely didn't have bacteria located there. At this point, his official diagnosis is chronic gastritis and esophagealitis. He is to continue with the Prevacid and eating more frequent small meals (thankfully, he has put on almost 4 pounds) and check back again in two months. Since he continues to experience headaches and have stomach upsets in the mornings, this conflict seems still unresolved.

Thankfully, the court issue has resolved. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, several people had re-assured us that all I needed to do was call the court and explain our situation and I would probably be relieved from the jury duty. My husband's sister had been excused twice when she was home with their twins. So, first thing this morning, I called the court.

Unfortunately, I was told that I would not be excused. However, they were waiting to hear if the case would actually go to court. The woman agreed to give me a call to let me know if the case went to court.

I now feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. She called moments ago to say that the case was settled out of court and I will NOT need to appear tomorrow morning. Of course, when I called to break the good news to hubby, he did say that his employers were willing to let him off to care for the boys, if need be.

Although he might have been allowed to stay home with them, would he really have been ABLE to stay home with them?? We already find that weekends get quite stressful. Their constant demands and endless messes tend to get on his nerves. He admits he's often glad to get back to work. Thankfully, we won't have to test his limits this time around. Whew!