Alright, so I did type a couple of scribbly little away-from-home late night ink blotches which were intended to be ramblings during the time away, but they're short, they're nearly illegible, they're incoherent crap, and I just don't feel like transcribing them. So I won't. Trust me. You aren't missing much.

Now, for tonight's incoherent crap. I'm not sure whether to start back at the beginning, and summarize events like a normal person would, or start at the end, which is where my brain is right now, and work my way back. To be honest, I'm feeling a bit tired, and not much in the mood for either. Uggh.

Here's the short and sweet of it:

Saturday afternoon / night: We drive in an easterly direction, rotating drivers every so often. As it gets late, we start thinking about getting a motel. No vacancies whatsoever in or around Lincoln, Nebraska. So we head onward through the night. By the time we get to Omaha, and then Des Moines in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the potential benefits of a motel diminish with time. So we drive on through the night, dead tired, looking (and feeling) like wrecks.

Sunday: After stopping to eat breakfast at Village Inn, continuing east through Iowa and into Illinois. By early afternoon, we reach grandparents' condo, where we find grandpa -- himself exhausted and visibly distraught, but extremely grateful to see all of us.

In the condo, he briefs us on what is known so far about grandma's situation. First, she has Alzheimer's (as has been suspected for a few years now). It has gradually been deteriorating to the point that it is no longer safe for her to go outside the condo alone. She gets confused and lost very quickly in unfamiliar locations, and has trouble with short term memory. (And no, it's not like Memento, because Alzheimer's patients are not aware of their own memory loss. They just spontaniously forget, but somehow still manage to think that they are fine.)

The second problem. The one that brought us all rushing out to see her. Cancer. The hospital staff had to run many tests to figure out specifically everything that was going on, but definitely cancer. Since she hadn't visited a doctor in nearly a decade, there was no way to diagnose it until the external signs became so visible that they necessitated an emergency trip. (Like certain other people I might occassionally write about, my grandmother absolutely HATES going to the doctor. With a passion. Perhaps some personality traits run in the family.)

With that in mind, before we went to the hospital to visit her, grandpa assisted us in checking into a good hotel nearby. After a night of driving, every one of us was feeling absolutely filthy, and in need of a shower. We had decided ahead of time that we would definitely be getting a hotel, because besides the fact that their place is way too small to fit all of us comfortably, we also didn't want to cause even more stress for the people we were trying to help.

After showing, we went to the hospital to see grandma (I think it had been 5 years since I last saw her.) Well, even if she didn't know the exact context of what was going on, she was very happy to see all of us. That much hadn't changed. She was in no pain. In fact, she didn't even think she belonged in the hospital. (That is, she didn't think she belonged in a hospital during those few lucid moments when she could be made to realize that she was in a hospital.)

When grandma got her evening meal, we decided to leave her in peace with it, and grandpa took the rest of us out to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant, where he insisted on paying the bill for all of us.

After dinner, we went back to visit grandma again for a couple hours (who was again very glad to see us after all these years), and then returned to the motel room for a much-needed night's rest.

Monday: Slept in. Woke up, met with grandpa, and again returned to the hospital to visit grandma. She was doing better in the morning (she was very glad to see how big we had grown after all these years). Since there wasn't going to be much else they could do with her after completing all the tests, she was nearly due for releasee. We stayed with her until most of the paperwork completed.

Grandpa thought it would be best for her if the condo was free of other occupants for a few hours when she first arrived, so she could peacefully get re-introduced to the place, so we went to the local mall for a few hours, ate at the food court, and I played my Gameboy while bouncing and parents wandered around the stores. (Let's face it: Typically, with the exception of one, two, or maybe three stores, most malls are the most boring places on earth.)

After the mall, we called grandpa, who determined that it would indeed be safe for us to return to the condo. We did so, and arrived to find a grandma who was very happy that we had all come to visit.

We stuck around for the evening, during which grandpa gave us a demonstration of his WebTV appliance (he had purchased his unit prior to the acquisition by M$), big flatscreen HD-ready tv, and DVD surround sound setup. (Like I said in one of the unpublished scribblings that I didn't get around to writing, grandpa has -- with the exception of personal computer technology -- always been an avid technophile.)

After the evening visit with grandma and grandpa, we went to an all-night restaurant across the street, where Bitscape did indeed order cornflakes from the waiter. And they were very delicious, thank you.

Back at the hotel, we considered whether we should head back the following morning, so as not to miss too much work. Since it had been established that grandma would at least be alright in the short term, she was back at home, and grandpa was not nearly so distraught with her there, it could have been said that our mission had been accomplished.

On the other hand, we wanted to make sure that they were really going te be alright. Follow through, so to speak. Besides, we had made the rare journy all the way there, so why not stick around one more day? There would always be more work to do back at the office(s). What's one more day? Obviously, the latter choice eventually won out collectively. With that, we went to bed.

Tuesday: We returned to the condo, where grandma was very excited that we had come all that way to visit them, and couldn't believe how tall bouncing and I had grown. Grandpa decided to show us around to Trader Joe's, a local specialty health food grocery store somewhat akin to Whole Foods Market or Wild Oats, except that the prices there were actually (gasp!) reasonable.

Long story short: We visited for the rest of the day and evening, returned to the hotel room, and slept another night.

Wednesday: Definitely departure day. Before hitting the road, we again stopped by their condo to say our goodbyes. Grandma was very excited to see us, and was amazed at how much bouncing and I had grown. Before we left, grandpa presented us with a gift: His old 8mm camcorder which he had bought in the 80s, including tapes of the footage he had shot, some of which featured yours truly at an embarrassingly young age. Very generous, to say the least.

We finally said our goodbyes, and then hit the road. Although it was very good to see grandma again, I think in retrospect, it was mostly to grandpa's benefit that we all showed up. He did express on multiple occassions how much he appreciated all of us coming. I think it was good to show support by being there, because it was, as he put it, the hardest time he's had in his life since his father died.

Grandma starts chemotherapy and radiation therapy today. Hopefully, the results will be good.

We drove the afternoon away on Wednesday, stopping at Applebee's in Omaha for supper. I wasn't feeling hungry at all, so I ordered a half serving of salad, of which I actually ate half. We journied on to Lincoln, where we found a good motel recommended by grandpa, correctly predicting that there would be sufficient vacancy, with the weekend after the 4th over.

After arriving at the motel, mom made a disturbing discovery: Her cell phone had again fallen out of its feeble encasement. She hoped it was lost somewhere in the car. Under the seat, perhaps. She had bouncing call it. Someone at the other end picked up. It was Applebee's. The phone had been lost there, but they had it in safekeeping, where it could be retrieved the following morning.

Upon hitting the couch-foldout-bed, I fell asleep almost immediately.

Thursday: I woke up extra late, due to the fact that there were no windows in the section I was sleeping. Dad had gone by himself back to Omaha to retrieve the missing cell phone. In the meantime, the rest of us ate the breakfast that was included in the room fare, and I proceeded to watch VH1 on one of the tvs.

Before leaving, I couldn't resist sticking a quarter into something I had eyed in the lobby on the way in: An ancient Mrs Packman arcade game, so old that the extremely fuzzy screen had lines burned into it. Since I've been playing the exact same game on my Gameboy for a couple of weeks now, I like to think that I have become somewhat skilled. I decided to test my skill on the "real" thing.

I discovered that it is actually slightly different. The ghosts in the arcade are a little faster than in the Gameboy version, and they definitely don't stay blue as long when you eat the big dots. Nevertheless, I was able to make it to the pretzel level, and was quite proud of myself for doing so.

Even with a late start after dad had gotten back from Omaha, 3 out of the 4 of us in the car couldn't resist touring around Lincoln a little bit to reminisce. The 4th occupant thought that remaining any longer than necessary was a complete a waste of time, but he was outvoted.

We journied around the town, and I pointed out various landmarks, but I was most distressed to find that the Homer's on S 48th street (my most favored music buying location once upon a time) no longer existed. A great pity for ucollege.edu, and all who reside about it. However, I did manage to procure a used Sarah McLachlan cd at one of the other Homer's outlets. A patronage to the once-most-cherished music store of them all. Homer. Father of Bart. Son of Abraham. Amen.

Before leaving town, we stopped for lunch at Valentino's. Truth be told, I wasn't really hungry at all, having just eaten a big motel breakfast just a couple hours before. But everyone else wanted to go there, so I ate a couple pieces of pizza, and we left town with a full stomach, with me in the driver's seat.

I drove. I drove. I drove. Stopping only when gas was required (and exchange of other fluids as well), until...

We reached the Louisville Compound, just as darkness completely settled over the land. Hooray! (And double hooray for the trip to be over. 4 people from the same family, stuck in an enclosed space together for an extended period of time inevitably becomes a recipe for frazzled nerves, as was proven by the final minutes of the trip.)

Now here I am, and some ants have discovered my pile of sunflower shells in my absence. Apparently, the power also went out today, because all the clocks in the house were blinking when we came in, and the entire circut breaker to the Lair was out (my particular circut often requires manual reactivation for some strange reason). I could ascertain from Argo's cronjob's that she had been running up until this morning, so it was a recent outage.

Tomorrow, I plan to get a one-day work week in before the weekend, and endeavor to catch up on whatever I missed while away.

But first, sleep. Just a little bit of sleep.