My mom had to take my dad to the emergency room tonight, because although he didn't fall at the restaurant, he fell at home, getting up from a chair.

Mom says he's breathing okay but is in some amount of pain, so probably some cracked ribs. It took them from 6:30 until 9:00 to go back to a bed, because of an 11-car pileup on I-5 that resulted in 13 people being brought to the hospital. Ugh.

My brother said my dad just plain can't see much anymore, and he may have just misjudged the distance from the chair to wherever. My brother and his wife live next door to my parents, and earlier today John watched my dad walk from John's backyard to Dad's backyard. John said Dad approached the back steps (two, concrete) and began lifting his foot to step up some three feet before the step began. At Costco, my dad pushes the cart while rubbing his right shoulder down the good on the right side of the aisle. John thinks my dad can't see out of his left eye, and that this lets him deal with his balance and the stuff he does see out of the good eye.

And I thought I'd get to bed in time to get up and work out tomorrow. I'll just wait for Mom to call. I'll turn up the phone ringer so I can hear it from bed.

Thanks to you who commented last entry; Jim, thanks especially for posting the full lyrics of the Gorka. It's been in my head for days.

This is how it's going to go from now on, more dire things happening closer together; we've been waiting for the other shoe to drop for ten years, and now that we can see it, we have to watch it float to earth as if it were filled with slowly leaking helium.