Scenes from a hospital waiting room...

I'm sitting in the surgery waiting room of a hospital in central NJ right now. My my is having knee replacement surgery - she's needed it for a while, but finally was able to schedule it for today... for one knee. We'll get to go through this all over again next year for her other knee.

My dad has MS and isn't able to do much, so this is going to be tough for both of them. It's not really easy for my brother and I, either. He lives nearby, so much of the caring for them falls on him. I took today off, drove up last night, and will drive back to Maryland sometime Sunday. I'll be back again next weekend and we'll see if/when I'm needed after that.

I can't say I've been looking forward to this - I'm busy at work with a couple major projects, and I hate giving up my weekends, my house with my own bed in it, my cat, or my free time. Which means I'm a pretty selfish bastard, since I'm grumbling and I'm not the one who is having his knee replaced.

Watching your parents get old and having to start to take care of them is weird. I've already found myself doing the things for my parents that they used to do for me - driving them around, going shopping for them, holding my mom's hand so she doesn't fall down, cooking meals. And I guess that's only going to increase.

I guess in some ways it's a good thing that I don't have much going on in the way of relationships or a personal life, so I don't have to work around that - but this is only going to make it harder to try to have one. And once again, complaining about this makes me realize I'm a pretty shallow, heartless jerk.

I'm not the world's most religious person, but I do try to get to church on Sundays, and last week's homily included talking about how one of the things that makes us human and unites us is suffering - we all go through different kinds, but everyone has had some in their lives, and it's part of our shared humanity. I guess when I find myself envying people who have healthy parents (or girlfriends) I need to remind myself that some people are lucky in some areas and suffer in others, and those seem to be where I'm suffering.

Also, I'm incredibly grateful for whoever got the idea of putting wifi in hospital waiting rooms.