This Is "Retirement"?

Yesterday was the first day I Should Have Been At Work, but wasn't.  (No, I haven't fully quit yet.  I'm still taking some short shifts until they replace at least one of the open positions at my branch.)

Such conflicting emotions!

Instead of doing one of a gazillion things on my After-I-Quit-Work to-do list, I spent the day with my daughter and newborn granddaughter.  Rachel ended up in the emergency room this weekend.  The surgeons removed a troublesome organ.  They sent her home on narcotics.  I spent a couple of days there, taking care of things that she simply couldn't.  While running some errands Tuesday morning, I wondered about certain customers, whether they'd come in yet.  I wondered how my co-workers were keeping up with the work, whether it was a busy day or a boring day, wondered who was subbing for me, etc.  And that's when it hit me.  Tuesday would have been loads easier physically and mentally if I had been at work instead of tending to family needs.  And yet ... working Tuesday would have been awful as my mind and heart would have been preoccupied with my babies and grandbabies, wanting to be there to help but unable.

Today I planned to spend a shorter amount of time with Rachel and Lizzy.  Instead the day was spent helping Katie get her car functional again.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

See what price my daughters pay when I make a "vacuum" of my calendar?  (Well.  Okay.  Not a vacuum.  But cleared out a little bit.)  It makes me wonder if I should protect my kids by going back to work!

Rachel says God had it all worked out.  She had a tiny baby ... and that baby is big enough to be safe/healthy but small enough to be carried by post-surgery mommy.  Rachel had been over-producing milk, so there was plenty in the freezer for Baby to live on while Mommy couldn't feed her.  And Nanna didn't have to be at work and could be butting in, soaking up some baby-snuggles between washing dishes and stuff like that.  I guess, if you're going to toss an emergency surgery into life, this probably was a darn-tootin' easy way to go about it.