It's never easy to deal with parents as they age. Either they become more who they really are, which may not be a good thing, or they fall ill, or they just - slowly - fail.

With me, it's always been my Mom. She's the one whose health was failing (for years, it seemed - but that's MS for you). She's the one who, in the last ten years, has been taken to the hospital via 911 calls seven times. Strokes, fevers that inflame the MS - it was always something, and always my Mom.

But now...(looks into the distance, trying to calm her frantic heartbeat, to push away the tears)

Long story short, last year my dad had a mild heart attack. He found this out recently, when he did a stress test and they couldn't read the results due to his EKG. They compared it with his baseline EKG, and found out he'd had a heart attack.

Right now he's fine. He goes to see a cardiologist next week. So we'll see.

How did I find out? His sister called me. His older sister, who lives in Montana. Bless her for calling. Daddy really didn't want to worry me, and for awhile I didn't want to call him to let him know I knew and thus would worry him worrying about me - but I had to tell him I love him. I had to call. And he was okay with that.

Not so much writing done. Today was shot for other life reasons. Soon DH will be home, and there'll be time for a glass of wine while touring the tiny corn patch; time for digging my fingers into clay, readying stuff for our first kiln firing, hopefully in a couple of weeks; and time for dinner and laughter with our children.

Yeah. There'll be time enough to write, tomorrow.