OVERLOAD!

Lousy pic of the three coyotes.

Okay, can we all just say that last week was the week from hell?

With the Boston Marathon bombings and the crazy manhunt aftermath, the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas that should have gotten way more attention, and the Senate's blunder on gun control and background checks I think we tipped the scales to emotional overload in a very big way.

Roger and I rarely turn the TV on during the day. We are not news watchers, and prefer to get information from online resources and then later from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The only way we can really endure the current events of the day is if it has been filtered through brilliant comic minds. This bit of wisdom comes from our old age: laughing is way better than crying.

But when the call came Friday morning that my mother had taken a pretty bad fall and was in an ER at a hospital 450 miles from us, that pretty much sent me over the edge into stressed-out land. It was really too much. Fortunately, my sister lives very close and was able to spend the TWELVE FREAKIN' HOURS in the ER with my mother, while they tried to determine if she had a fractured pelvic bone, and get her a room. It was finding an available hospital room that took the most time. But really it is an outrage that my poor mother with her aching body had to endure such a grueling experience, not to mention the incompetent staff who let her food sit for two hours, who tried to give her medication that she does not take, who munched on potato chips in my sister's face and told her to call the pharmacy herself to check on correct medications. WTF? They're definitely getting a letter from me. I can't wait to write it. (Late breaking news: My mom is okay, seriously bruised but nothing broken. She's going home from the hospital on Monday.)

With nerves jangled by such stuff, we also learned that one of our neighbors' friends spotted a MOUNTAIN LION on our road, when he was driving off their property around 8:00 pm one evening a week ago. That explains why the usually robust deer population here has been scarce for about two weeks.

Then Sunday morning Roger announced, "Hey Robin, come look! I see a coyote." So, I got up and ran to the front door to see THREE coyotes trotting up our driveway toward the road. THREE HUGE COYOTES! ISN'T THAT A PACK? (Click on the pic at the top.)

I go out every morning just after daylight and feed a little feral cat that our neighbors abandoned. I also rehang the bird feeders (which we have to take in every night because of the BEAR). I have always gone out knowing that I could have a close encounter with a coyote, but I never considered running into a pack. The other day I said to Roger, "If you hear me scream, it's because I'm having a close encounter with the mountain lion." Now, I swear, I could be screaming about so many things.