Never a Dull Moment
On our way back to Durango we hit a few detours. The first was in Chicago. Now if you draw a straight line from Cincinnati to Durango you do not go through Chicago so this was an unplanned detour. We were just outside of Indianapolis when Dan’s mom called to inform him that he may need to go to Thailand. Dan’s sister, Tracy, had had a bad accident in her home there and needs his help to come back here for further treatment.
On this occasion I am reminded how proud I am of my husband's chosen profession, he is a paramedic. The doctors in Thailand only agreed to release Tracy to him because he is a medic and can care for her on the return flights. One problem however… Dan’s passport expired on June 20th. Public Service Announcement: NEVER let your passport expire. Many calls to the State Department, US Embassy in Thailand, an entire day in the Chicago Federal Building and Dan has a new passport.
Special thanks to Marc and Heather, our friends who put us up on three-hours notice and held our hands through the trains and throngs to get us to the right office. To our other loved ones in the Windy City, please accept our most humble apologies for not seeing you too, but I know you’ll forgive us given the circumstances.
Once that task had been handled we entered a “hurry up and wait” phase. Hurry to get into Colorado so that if Dan had to fly out I’d have a place to stay, and wait because we didn’t know when or if he’d be going. By Monday we still didn’t know so we detoured to Aspen for some job interviews. Tuesday at noon we got the call and raced to Durango, one more hectic preparation day and he was off. This morning he left for the 26-hour flight to Bangkok where he will meet his sister in the International Hospital there, help her settle some details and lovingly return her to her family, where she can heal and recover. Thailand is her home however, so she won’t be here for too long I don’t imagine.
I am resting in the veritable lap of luxury that is our friends’ Bob and Sherry’s house. You may remember them from the “Mexican Prank Wars of December 2004”. Bob is a dentist and he and Sherry are off charitably donating their time to help those in need of dentistry in Peru, before hiking the Inca trail and otherwise touring the country. While they are gone we are house sitting and watching after their oh-so-lovable dog Mailo, who is my protector while Dan is away.
It would be repetitive to gush yet again about how amazingly generous everyone is to us, so instead I will just say thank you.
Assuming all goes smoothly for Dan and his sister, he and I should be moving to a new house and beginning new jobs (thus ending this chapter), by August 1st.
