A Zillion Last-Minute Changes of Plan

It looks like I'm going to be heading out to California the middle of next week... You may remember that I mentioned here a while ago that my stepfather is very sick with cancer. He and my mother have been bearing up about as well as can be expected, I think, but he's definitely deteriorating rapidly. My grandmother's been staying with them and helping my mom take care of him, but she's got to go back East for a couple of weeks to take care of some business that really just can't be put off any longer. The original plan was that she was going to leave the end of March, and I was going to come and stay with Mom while she was gone. (Or at least for most of the period she'd be gone, since there was some problem with me getting time off of work until the beginning of April.)

Well, Mom just called me here at work tonight and asked me if I could come sooner. Apparently he's getting worse faster than expected, and it's looking like a really good idea if my grandmother can get out and back sooner rather than later. Needless to say, I immediately said I'd come, but I have to admit, I was feeling really, really stressed about it there for a bit. Truth to tell, I really don't deal well with abrupt changes of plan, especially when they accompany situations that are already emotionally difficult. So there was a somewhat panicked moment there where I found myself thinking, "Oh, god, what if the boss has a problem with rescheduling my vacation time? What if I have problem getting plane tickets so close to the last minute? What if Grandmom can't change her own plane reservations? What if Happiness turns out to be really sick and needs me to be around to give her medicine?"

I shouldn't stress so much. Within half an hour, I'd gotten an e-mail back from my supervisor saying it was OK and he'd add my time off to the schedule tomorrow, I'd gotten a phone call back from my mother saying that Grandmom had successfully altered her reservations, I'd booked my own reservations online (with cheap fares at convenient times, even -- I love Southwest!), and I'd talked to a co-worker who assured me that she'd look after the cats and make sure that Happiness got whatever medication she needed. What a blessing it is to live in the Information Age, when these kinds of emergency changes of plans can be dealt with almost as soon as they come up. (Not to mention having understanding co-workers!)

Anyway, I'm feeling much calmer now. I can't say that I'm looking forward to going out there, exactly... I know things are going to be a bit difficult to deal with. But I actually really feel much, much better just knowing that there's something, anything, that I can do to help.

And that's your State of My Real Life Update for the moment... Back to science-fictional wibblings again soon, I imagine.